Films

• 3 Stimmen / 3 Głosy13'

  AUT 2011, 13’

  Three languages: on the left side of the screen a young man seated on a chair is telling, in German, a story about migration, which a women on a chair on the right side of the screen is telling in English. A voiceover is recounting the same autobiographical story in Slovak. The split-screen technique is used so that the man, woman and the voice, though isolated, relate to each other. In this three-voice spoken round, a personal story is recovered and repeated, and becomes universally valid. At the same time the film is about the possiblity and limits of adopting language and a new culture.

   

  read more

  Authors:

  • Miriam Bajtala
• Kichot15'

  POL 2011, 15’

  For the eccentric Marcin Harlender the most important thing is art. And he defends himself against the outer world with it. It is thus logical that Marcin, his pregnant wife and their four children are shown almost exclusively in their grimy, littered small apartment. The film does not denounce their lifestyle, far removed as it is from conventional norms, verging on the irresponsible. At least for the compulsive hoarder Marcin, who is afraid a magician will change him into a mechanical metal kangaroo, it functions.

   

  read more

  Authors:

  • Jagoda Szelc
• ABC12'

  GER 2011, 12’

  After countless years of civil war, being able to read and write means a lot in Liberia. Especially because “if you educate girls you are educating for the future”, as a Liberian taxi-driver is quoted as saying at the beginning of the film. Velegai Flomo is 16 or 19 years old. Her parents are not sure any more. Her documents were lost in the war. Velegai always wanted to learn to write. Now she’s attending school with her daughter Garmai. Velegai’s voiceover story is accompanied by scenes from her daily life – and images symbolic of the experiences of war.

   

  read more

  Authors:

  • Madli Lääne
• Waterscope / Obserwując wodę22'

  GER 2012, 22’

  The film essay combines water images with sound clips from cinematic history. Water-falls, locks, dams, baths, sewage plants and more. Often we don’t immediately see what contains or directs the water: dreary architecture. At one point the superimposed images are compressed into a flashing montage with a worrying undertone. With no explanations given, the film collage illuminates mankind’s relationship to water: devotion, subjugation, utilisation, pollution, dependence, worship…

  read more

  Authors:

  • Carsten Aschmann
• All day strolling / Całodniowy spacer29'

  UK, GEO 2011, 29’

  When Russia occupied Abkhazia in 1993, thousands of people fled to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, where they occupied hotels, university and military buildings. More than ten years later the government of Georgia sent them to remote townships – one of which is Fotskho. Built in the 1960s for the workers constructing a hydroelectric power plant, Fotskho was vacated after the break-up of the USSR. Poingnant images introduce us to some of the inhabitants of this desolate settlement. They live in poverty, have no prospects for the future and are fighting to preserve their dignity – like the old woman who walks her dog dressed in her best clothes and high heels.

  “All Day Strolling” is Sandro Kakabadze's first film made as a final project for his degree at Goldsmiths, University of London. The director has a journalistic background, for the last ten years he has worked as a video editor, cameraman and reporter with various Georgian TV companies.

  read more

  Authors:

  • Sandro Kakabadze
• Adele 15'

  AUT 2011, 5’

  This could be a classic YouTube video. A young woman is sitting in front of her laptop computer, speaking into the camera. She is going to sing Adele’s song “Someone like you”. At first she more or less manages a cover version, but soon she can’t keep up and starts singing wrong notes. So she has to listen to Adele, and is obviously moved by the song. Instead of looking into the camera, her gaze turns inward, resigned and sad. A commentary on YouTube as a platform for self-expression.

   

  read more

  Authors:

  • Kurdwin Ayub
• A Day on the Drina / Dzień na Drinie17'

  BIH 2011, 17’

  As if they were departing on an outing, a group of men board a bus that will take them to a dried up river bed. It is an excavation site. Parts of skeletons appear – those of more than 250 Bosnians who between 1992 and 1995 were killed by soldiers of the Republika Srpska in Višegrad and the surrounding area. The camera follows what is happening almost casually, and it is this neutral approach particularly, without questions or spoken commentary, that makes the film so oppressive.

  read more

  Authors:

  • Ines Tanović