doclisboa 2007

programme > october 19

programme day-by-day

18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28

october 19 - friday

19 Oct. 14.30 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
18 Oct. 18.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
Their Frozen Dream [VN]
Jan Troell
60´ Sweden, 1997

After the Oscar-nominated fiction feature “Flight of the Eagle” (1982) – the story of three Swedish explorators that tried to reach the North Pole in a balloon) – director Jan Troell returned to the same subject in the documentary “Their Fozen Dream”. Narrated by Max von Sydow, this film is based on the authentic documents (letter, photographs and personal journals) found between the remains of the ill-fated expedition, discovered in 1930 on an island in the Artic Ocean in 1930 after 32 years buried in the ice.

19 Oct. 16.30 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
21 Oct. 16.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
& etc [P]
Cláudia Clemente
25´ Portugal 2007

Founded in 1973, “& etc” is a small publishing house with unique standards: it’s not profit oriented, it doesn’t publish commercial books and it favours unknown authors. Over the years it has become a reference in the Portuguese publishing world, where it’s both by its carefully designed squared books, and by the unique authors it has published: among many others, director João César Monteiro, and poets Adília Lopes and Alberto Pimenta. In this documentary, two of its directors, Vitor Silva Tavares and Rui Caeiro, remember some of the episodes that have marked three decades of literary adventures.

Poeticamente exausto, verticalmente só [P]

19 Oct. 16.30 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
21 Oct. 16.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
Poetically Exhausted, Vertically Alone – The Story of José Bação Leal
Luísa Marinho
56´ Portugal 2007

José Bação Leal was born in 1942 in Portugal and died in Mozambique, during the portuguese colonial war. With only 23 years old he was a promising writer and thinker. Like hundreds of young men of his generation, he died in a war he was against. He left us an impressive artistic testimony of his own human experience

19 Oct. 18.30 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
Intimate Stranger [DF]
Alan Berliner
60´ USA 1991

Seventeen years after his death, Alan Berliner has constructed a poetic and emotional jigsaw puzzle out of the voluminous memorabilia of his grandfather's life story. Joseph Cassuto, a Palestinian Jew, was a cotton buyer for the Japanese in Egypt prior to World War II. With Hitler's armies just miles away from Alexandria, Cassuto's family is split in half. They reunite in New York after the war, but Cassuto is restless there. He moves to Japan to spend eleven months of the year, virtually abandoning his wife and children in the U.S. while he pursues his business interests and a life-long love affair with Japanese culture.

19 Oct. 18.30 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
Nobody's Business [DF]
Alan Berliner
60´ USA 1996

Alan Berliner takes on his reclusive father as the reluctant subject of this poignant and graceful study of family history and memory. The director travels to Poland and visits Jewish cemeteries, interviews scores of relatives throughout the U.S., makes a trip to the Mormon archives in Salt Lake City, digs up countless family photos and home movies, as well as old documents in a relentless search for his roots. What emerges is a uniquely cinematic biography that finds both humor and pathos in the swirl of conflicts and affections that bind father and son.

19 Oct. 21.00 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
22 Oct. 22.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
My 9/11 [CI]
Tjebbo Penning
11´ USA/Holland 2006

On my laptop (after the kids were in bed), next to the window from which I saw it all happen, I made a little film in a way that was completely new to me; no budget, no crew, no pressure. The video images of the WTC on 9/11 were shot by a neighbor, Andrea Star Reese, who had more or less the same view on the towers. She shot what I remember seeing, and was so very kind to let me use the material.

19 Oct. 21.00 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
22 Oct. 22.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
Jesus Camp [CI]
Heidi Ewing
85´ USA 2006

A growing number of Evangelical Christians believe there is a revival underway in America whereby Christian youth must take up the leadership of the religious right. “Jesus Camp” follows Levi, Rachael, Tory and a number of other young children to Pastor Becky Fischer's "Kids on Fire" summer camp in Devil's Lake, North Dakota, where kids as young as 6 years-old are taught to become dedicated Christian soldiers in "God's army." The film follows these children at camp as they hone their "prophetic gifts" and are schooled in how to "take back America for Christ." The film is a first-ever look into an intense training ground that recruits born-again Christian children to become an active part of America's political future.

19 Oct. 23.00 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
22 Oct. 23.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
The Two Faces of War [I]
Diana Andringa and Flora Gomes
100´ Portugal 2007

Liberation war to some, Africa war to others, the conflict that opposed the PAIGC to the Portuguese troops between 1963 and 1974 is described differently in the two countries’ history books. But those aren’t the only “two faces” of this war. Beyond the conflict, there was always some degree of complicity between the two adversaries: “We’re not fighting against the Portuguese people, but against colonialism”, Amilcar Cabral said. And it’s true that many Portuguese were on the PAIGC side. It was no accident that the Captains’ Movement that would lead to the 1974 Revolution was born in Guiné. Again, two faces: the war ends with a doble victory – Guiné’s independence, and the democracy in Portugal.

19 Oct. 14.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
23 Oct. 20.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
El ejido, La Loi du Profit [I]
Jawad Rhalib
80´ Belgium 2006

Today, the formerly-deserted region of Almeria in southern Spain produces one third of Europe’s winter consumption of fruits and vegetables and reaps two thirds of the country’s farm profits. This ‘economic miracle’ in a greenhouse relies on the labour of nearly 80.000 immigrants, half of whom do not have proper working papers. In a destroyed environment where the air is vitiated by pesticides and ground water is running out, the village of El Ejido illustrates, almost to the point of caricature, this industrial exploitation of men and the land encouraged by globalisation. The workers stay in chabolas, small constructions made of cardboard and plastic, without water or electricity. Near-slavery that fills our plates…

19 Oct. 16.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and The Warhol Factory [RE]
Esther Robinson
75´ USA 2007

“A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and The Warhol Factory” is director Esther Robinson's personal inquiry into the truth behind her uncle Danny Williams' mysterious 1966 disappearance. Virtually unknown today, Danny was Andy Warhol's lover, and a promising young filmmaker. The discovery of 20 never-before-seen films William's made during his time at the Factory reveals a luminous talent and a stark gap in the historical record. Combined with Robinson's intimate interviews of surviving Factory members, the film gets beyond the icons and quietly dismantles the Warhol myth-making machine, allowing a deeper examination of the human fragility on which Andy Warhol's empire was built.

19 Oct. 18.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
20 Oct. 16.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
The Monastery [VN]
Pernille Rose Gronkjaer
84´ Denmark 2006

This is a story about the 82-year-old bachelor Mr. Vig, who has never known love, and Sister Amvrosija, a young Russian nun, who by chance, or destiny, becomes part of his life. 50 years ago Jørgen Lauersen Vig bought Hesbjerg Castle, situated in the Danish country side, with the purpose of turning it into a monastery. Now, many years later, he is about to realize his dream. A group of Russian Orthodox nuns are on their way, and thus Mr. Vig’s life-long dream is about to come true. But, nuns have plans and wills of their own, and Mr. Vig must realize that the road to fulfilling his dream is very different than what he imagined.

19 Oct. 20.45 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
24 Oct. 18.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
Jean Paul [I]
Francesco Uboldi
8´ Italie 2006

Baloum is a very remote and pristine village up in the mountains of Western Cameroon. Jean Paul was born and raised there. He's dying chained to a tree, victim of superstitions. He's been left without food and water for days. Jean, the man who is in charge of his custody, talks about a magical ring.

19 Oct. 20.45 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
24 Oct. 18.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
The Devil Came on Horseback [I]
Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern
85´ USA 2007

Using the exclusive photographs and first hand testimony of former U.S. Marine Captain Brian Steidle, “The Devil Came on Horseback” takes the viewer on an emotionally charged journey into the heart of Darfur, Sudan, where an Arab run government is systematically executing a plan to rid the province of it’s black African citizens. As an official military observer, Steidle had access to parts of the country that no journalist could penetrate. He was unprepared for what he would witness and experience, including being fired upon, taken hostage, and being unable to intervene to save the lives of young children. Ultimately frustrated by the inaction of the international community, Steidle resigned and returned to the US to expose the images and stories of lives systematically destroyed.

19 Oct. 22.45 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
Autoportrait ou Ce qui Nous Manque à Tous [DF]
Man Ray
11´ France 1930

“Autoportrait” is the perfect example of Man Ray’s photographic experimental work, here done directly on the film stock. With his own atelier as a backdrop, these images combine the photographic manipulation of the most unexpected objects – from pins to salt and pepper, and even the porcelain pipe with a glass bubble, the object/sculpture whose name is the subtitle of “Autoportrait”.

La Garoupe [DF]
Man Ray
9´ France 1937

“La Garoupe” was Man Ray’s first colour film. Shot in Antibes, on the French Mediterranean coast, it takes the apparent form of a “holiday movie” where we can see, among other, Picasso and Paul Eluard.

Wedlock House: An Intercourse [DF]
Stan Brakhage
11` USA 1959

Window, Water, Baby, Moving [DF]
Stan Brakhage
12´ USA 1959

Kindering [DF]
Stan Brakhage
3´ USA 1987

I... Dreaming [DF]
Stan Brakhage
8´ USA 1988

Untitled (For Marilyn) [DF]
Stan Brakhage
11´ USA 1992

Brakhage's work offers an eloquent and deeply affecting alternative to consumer culture in the West. He abjures predigested emotions, predictable formulas, and "pretty pictures." His films cannot be reduced to a simple summary or message, and each viewer's experience of them will necessarily be somewhat different. The engaged viewer is removed from the state of mind in which to look at a scene or sight is to desire it, covet it, think you understand it, and wish to own it: instead, Brakhage asks for both much less and much more — he asks that you dance with it. (Fred Camper)

Notebook [DF]
Marie Menken
10´ USA 1940-62

Marie was one of the first filmmakers to improvise with a camera and edit while shooting. She filmed with her entire body, her entire nervous system. She took the film – the non-narrative film, the poetic film, the language of film – in a completely new direction, away from classic filmmaking and into a new adventure.
Jonas Mekas

Our Trip to Africa [DF]
Peter Kubelka
13´ Áustria 1966

In 1961 Peter Kubelka was asked to make a documentary about a group of Europeans on an African hunting trip. He accompanied them, recorded many hours of film and sound, and then spent five years editing this material into a most unconventional film. The result, Unsere Afrikareise, is one of the most densely packed 12½ minutes in film history, and makes truly extraordinary use of the creative possibilities of sound. Thanks to Kubelka’s editing, the film is also an exemplary allegory of the way the westerners see the African continent, as well as a portrayal of all the traces of European colonialism.

26 Oct. 14.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
19 Oct. 14.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
Surplus - Terrorised into Being Consumers [VN]
Erik Gandini
52´ Sweden 2002

Why is the lifestyle of consumerism a source of such rage today? How come the privilege of buying goods does not automatically lead to happiness? Why all this emptiness despite our wealth? Erik Gandini's approach through ”Surplus” is to portray this issue from an emotional rather than a factual perspective. Shot in the US, India, China, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, Canada and Cuba during three years, ”Surplus” is the result of a complicated editing process by talented music composer/editor/percussionist Johan Söderberg. Much of the film’s theoretical approach to global consumerism is indebted to John Zerzan, the controversial american philosopher whose writings inspired many to take action into the streets.

26 Oct. 14.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
19 Oct. 14.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
Hidden [VN]
David Aronowich
8´ Sweden 2002

Hidden is an animated short documentary based on an interview with a hidden refugee child in Sweden. It combines the voice of one refugee child with animated images. Giancarlo has no permit to stay in Sweden and he describes how it is to be persecuted. The film travels to Peru and to the school in Sweden but mostly stays in the room where the interview took place. In the room is Giancarlo's father and mother with a newborn baby and his little brother.

26 Oct. 14.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
19 Oct. 14.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
Arks [VN]
Karin Karlsson and Mita Moberg
13´ Sweden 2004

One hundred miles north of the Arctic circle, a small community of hardy individuals fish on a frozen lake in temperatures of minus 25 degrees Celsius. This documentary joins them in their cabins or 'arks'.

26 Oct. 14.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
19 Oct. 14.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
I Remember Lena Svedberg [VN]
Carl Johan De Geer
6´ Sweden 1999

Lena Svedberg was an artist, a genius, but it was almost impossible to understand what she was thinking. She was painting walls and floors black and she was making chaotic, detailed drawings. She was only 26 when she committed suicide in 1972, having suffered from an eating disorder, anorexia neurosa, which nobody had heard about in those days.

26 Oct. 18.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
19 Oct. 16.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
Rock Soup
Lech Kowalski
81´ USA 1991

A documentary about a group of homeless people who live in a camp in New York’s Lower East Side: marginalized men and women who, to survive in the heart of this great metropolis, have organized a welcome centre in Culture Plaza, the Rainbow Soup Kitchen, where every guest can receive a hot meal and shelter from the cold. When the city threatens to close the centre to tear down the whole neighbourhood, the homeless come together and start their battle with the city.

24 Oct. 20.45 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
19 Oct. 18.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
The Boot Factory
Lech Kowalski
87´ France/Poland 2000

The life of a group of young Polish punkers in Cracow and their small business making leather boots. Kowalski films the work and leisure of three friends – Lukasz, Piotr and Wojclech – divided among hard music, wild parties, and capitalist commercial strategies. They are caught at a critical moment of their lives, in the grip of problems with alcohol and drugs, quarrels with their girlfriends, and children to look after.

19 Oct. 21.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
The Land before the Sky [SE]
João Botelho
63´ Portugal 2007

“A Terra antes do Céu” is an encounter of artists in order to celebrate the genius of the Portuguese writer Miguel Torga. It films the creation of music by some contemporary composers who took inspiration from his magical texts or the passages from Torga’s “Wondrous Kingdom”. And filming the soul of the stones and of the hills and the heart and the eyes of the men and animals of the world that Torga invented, challenging all of us and challenging God himself.

19 Oct. 23.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 1)
Despuès de la Revolución [SE]
Vincent Dieutre
55´ France 2007

In his latest film, Vincent Dieutre recounts his first stay in Buenos Aires, a world that is new to him, yet feels very familiar. With a «maelstrom of images», slow and fast, superimposed, the filmmaker pays tribute to a city that is free, lively, colourful, «where everything still seems possible» and that remains an inexhaustible source of daydreams.

23 Oct. 16.45 - Culturgest (Large Auditorium)
19 Oct. 14.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
As operações SAAL [P]
João Dias
90´ Portugal 2007

The Local Ambulatory Support Service (SAAL) was created in 1974 by architect Nuno Portas when he was the I Provisional Government’s Housing and Urbanism Secretary of State. SAAL’s objective was to assist poorly housed populations to rebuild or convert their own neighbourhoods using mainly their own material and financial resources. Portuguese architecture after the 1974 revolution is SAAL – a unique movement in the history of architecture that served as an exemple to many other projects worldwide.

23 Oct. 18.15 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
19 Oct. 16.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
Cool & Crazy [VN]
Knut Erik Jensen
105´ Norway 2001

With “Cool and Crazy” one of Norway's most experienced and renowned feature film directors is bringing to the screen a world he knows and loves. And he does it in the spirit of the people he portrays, with irreverence and wit and highly charged. For some this will be a film about men. For others it will be about love. Or politics. Or fish. Above all it is about the dignity of ordinary lives lived under extreme circumstances.

21 Oct. 22.45 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
19 Oct. 18.00 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
Ghosts of Cité Soleil [VN]
Asger Leth and Milos Loncarevic
88´ Denmark 2007

Two brothers are stuck in a system of political violence. They are gangleaders in President Aristide’s secret army of slum gangs. One wants to fight for the president, the other wants out. They live in Cité Soleil, the most dangerous place on earth. A film about Haiti, where gangs, gun rappings, love and dramatic, political events, together, tell the true story of the last months of Aristide’s presidency.

19 Oct. 20.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
The Perfect Human [VN]
Jørgen Leth
13´ Denmark 1967

The five obstructions [VN]
Jorgen Leth and Lars Von Trier
90´ Denmark 2003

In the year 2000, Lars von Trier challenged Jørgen Leth to make 5 remakes of “The Perfect Human” (directed by Leth in 1967), but each time Trier will put forward obstructions, constraining Leth to rethink the story and the characters of the original film. Playing the naïve anthropologist, Leth attempts to embrace the cunning challenges set forth by the devious and sneaky Trier. Five times Leth will have to deal with the limitations, commands and prohibitions made by Trier. It is a game full of traps and vicious turns. A fascinating film about a filmmaker not only revisiting, but also recreating one of his first films. “The Five Obstructions” is an investigative journey into the phenomenon of filmmaking.

25 Oct. 11.00 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
19 Oct. 22.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
Suckers [VN]
John Webster
57´ Finland 1993

“Suckers” is a portrayal of Finland during the recession of the early 1990’s that is delightful to watch, yet makes you shiver at the same time. Undoubtedly influenced by “Salesman” (1968), the classic Albert and David Maysles documentary, the film concentrates on following the daily grind of three door-to-door vacuum cleaner salespeople. Kristiina is a tenacious and ruthless top seller, who talks single mothers into buying. Heimo is a Karelian with a jovial way of speech, who gets by in his work. The unemployed car mechanic Kimmo has only just started in his new profession and doesn’t seem to get a single vacuum cleaner sold. This gallery of characters is completed by the salespeople’s aggressive boss, who lacks every bit of understanding for those who are unsuccessful.

25 Oct. 11.00 - Culturgest (Small Auditorium)
19 Oct. 22.30 - Cinema Londres (Room 2)
The Stars Caravan [VN]
Arto Halonen
56´ Denmark/Finland 2000

The Soviet Union developed the Kyrgyz Nomadic Cinema as a propaganda weapon, taking specially selected films by cars and horse caravans to the nomads of the rugged mountain regions. The collapse of the system and the shift to market economy following independence saw the end of the travelling cinema and a move from Soviet propaganda to American B-movie violence. In eastern Kyrgyzstan, in the small town of Naryn, the two cinema projectionists and protagonists, Zarylbek and Myrat, represent different eras and ways of thinking. The older projectionist, Zarylbek, yearns for the Soviet system and the travelling cinema culture, whereas Murat has grown up in the new capitalist world and is more interested in western culture.

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