4th athens ethnographic film festival - screening schedule

A T H E N S E T H N O G R A P H I C F I L M F E S T I V A L

P.O. Box. 66009, 15501, Holargos – Athens, tel: 6945104788,

mail: [email protected], site: www.ethnofest.gr

November 2013

4th Athens Ethnographic Film Festival

29th, 30th November & 1st December 2013

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FRIDAY 29/11

17.00 / PA: Mr Coperthwaite: A Life in the Maine Woods Dir: Anna Grimshaw 84' (U.S.A) For the last fifty years, Bill Coperthwaite has lived and worked in the forest. He is a builder of yurts, and a maker of spoons, bowls and chairs. A meditation on time and process, the film explores an overlooked aspect of American culture and the critical place of nature within it. 18.30/ ST: Together As One Dir: Kilian Lamtur Tanlaka 39' (Norway) Kola nut is an item around which the feeling, experience, sense, and lived “reality” of belonging, togetherness, unity, oneness, friendship and peace is being expressed. This film shows what a thing, a nut or a natural resource, can mean to people. 19.30/ TR: 04/02/11 Dir: Mahmoud Faraq 6' (France) “The knocks on the door did not reveal who was hiding behind it. I wish I could be dead, die in their hands, before the fear has the better of me.” These are the words of a martyr of the Arab Revolution in Egypt. Divina Comedia Dir: Vincent Guetta 21' (France) - Producer in attendance On the sixth day, God created man. Then, man created the machine. 20.45/ PA: Julia Dir: Pedro Branco 12' (Portugal)




Julia is the matriarch of one of the three Romani communities living in the urban-area of the city of Abrantes, leader of a household of 15. In this she revisits some episodes of her life while approaching how Romani traditions and lifestyle try to adjust to the present days, increasingly distant from a closed, restricted past. BREAK 21.00/ ST: Cafe Finovo Dir: Lefteris Fylaktos 53’ (Greece, Germany) - Filmmaker in attendance Within the walls of the Alter St. Matthäus cemetery in Berlin, we meet artists, story-tellers and grave sponsors— the cultural life revolving around the lively Café-finovo and its reputable cakes. 22.10/ SP: Framing the Other Dir: Ilja Kok & Willem Timmers 25' (The Netherlands) Each year, hundreds of Western tourists come to see the unusually adorned Mursi tribe in Ethiopia; posing for them has become the main source of income for the Mursi. To make more money, they embellish their "costumes" to appear more exotic, causing their original culture to disintegrate. 22.35/ PA: Merqana Dir: Tanja Wol Sorensen 46' (Italy) Set in the ancient, walled city of Harar and its surroundings, the film takes you to an epic journey through the social life of one of the world’s most popular drugs, treading upon green carpets of leaves, and dancing at the rhythm of centuries-old mystic rituals. 23.20/ SP: Le Message du Issa Dir: Quino Pinero 63' (Mali, U.K., Spain) The message from the Niger River along its desert shores has been capturedand its sounds are the main characters in this film, a journey through the music of the different cultures and genres coexisting in the Niger Bend, all sharing a common interaction with the same river. 00.25/ PA: The One and the Many Dir: Andy Lawrence 56' (U.K.)




This anthropological documentary film offers an in-depth look at the Tantrik Aghori, holy seekers of Northern India who are the living disciples of the great Guru Gorakh Nath. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ST:STUDENT FILMS / PA:PANORAMA / TR:TRIBUTE / SP:SPECIAL SCREENING




SATURDAY 30/11

16.00/ PA: The Retirement of Mr. And Mrs. Zhang Dir: Zhang Mo 70' (China) How do an elderly Beijing couple who served in the Chinese People's Liberation Army since the early 1940s, reflect on their tumultuous national and personal histories? 17.10/ ST: Toku Fenua Dir: Martin Zinggl 29' (Austria) “Toku Fenua” takes us on an extraordinary journey into the South Pacific and offers a glimpse of life on the remote island of Niulakita (Tuvalu), the smallest, most isolated inhabited island in the world. 17.40/ PA: Our Missionaries Dir: Martin Gruber 9' (Germany) The story of a misconceived intercultural encounter, between villagers on the coast of Guinea, West Africa, and the Christian missionaries that settled there in their effort to bring Christianity to this Muslim dominated area. 18.00/ Pascale Feghali Workshop Presentation 20' 18.30/ TR: Le Bonheur Des Dames Dir: Maya Larguet 28' (France) - Producer in attendance A Franciscan community is getting ready to celebrate Easter in a convent of the 17th district in Paris. 19.30/ TR: Dusty Night Dir: Ali Hazara 20' (France) - Filmmaker in attendance Under the headlights of cars or those of a gas station, the night sweepers of Kabul move heavy dust loads along one avenue - a sisyphian profession that speaks volumes about the state of the country.

PA: How to Build a Kamra-e-Faoree




Dir: Lukas Birk & Sean Foley 9' (Afghanistan) (screens before Dusty Night) “Afghan Box Camera” documents a living form of photography on the

brink of disappearing in Afghanistan, one of the last places on earth where photographers have continued to use a simple type of instant camera called the kamra-e-faoree ('instant camera') for means of making a living. BREAK 20.30/ TR: Fournoi Dir: Alida Dimitriou 43’ (Greece) An explorer conducts anthropological research on the island of Fournoi in Ikaria, observing their lives, their occupation and their daily conversations. Thus, the Fournoi society is vividly evoked, along with its memories and sorrows. 21.30/ PA: Memory Objects, Memory Dialogues Dir: Alyssa Grossman & Selena Kimball 26' (Germany) “Memory Objects, Memory Dialogues”, a split-screen animated film, explores the complex nature of memory in contemporary post-communist Romania. Using a collection of everyday, household objects as windows into the past, it features 16mm stop-motion animations of these artifacts, projected alongside selections of ethnographic interviews with the objects’ owners. 21.55/ ST: Searcy County Dir: Noam Osband 6' (U.S.A.) "I have passed this livestock auction house many times and I had always wanted to film it. One day, I finally brought my camera and… well, I just hope I created a piece that is respectful and honest, a view into a little-known world through the eyes of an outsider." 22.00/ PA: Il Limite (Sea Boundary) Dir: Rossela Schillaci 55' (Italy) An incisive portrait of life aboard a Sicilian fishing vessel, the film depicts the daily struggle of fishermen to earn a living in a harsh physical environment that brings out the social and economic tensions of modern society. 22.55 / ST: Congo Super 8




Dir: Lesley N. Braun 9' (Canada) Filmed in Kinshasa’s velodrome, an old Belgian colonial motorcycle racetrack, “Congo Super 8” showcases two folkloric dance troupes. Originally shot on super 8 film, the visuals pander to our nostalgia for old-fashioned ethnographic films, while disrupting historical frames of reference. 23.05/ ST: ΕΞΕΓΕΡΣΗ or Mother's Recipe For Boiled Eggs Dir: Mihail Chronopoulos-Mantas 17' (Greece) A ‘first -person cinema’ documentary in the Greek language, which focuses on filmic aspects of personal history. The director comes back recurrently through this documentary as a self referential artist trying to find his voice through time and culture on two continents. 23.25/ SP: Orania Dir: Tobias Lindner 94' (Germany) Orania is a remote village in the barren centre of South Africa, an "intentional community" where only white Afrikaans people live - a culturally homogeneous place in a multicultural country. A feature-length documentary about cultural identity and the thin line between self-determination and discrimination. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ST:STUDENT FILMS / PA:PANORAMA / TR:TRIBUTE / SP:SPECIAL SCREENING




SUNDAY 1/12 15.00/ TR: Blush Dir: Luciana Botelho Bodnar 13' (France) At 26, Nicolas is a young man in perfect harmony with his times: he is discrete, athletic and trendy. However, in his small flat in Paris, we discover that two simple carton boxes contain a precious secret that has to do with him. 15.15/ TR: Oasis Boulevard Dir: Jerome Sitruk 34' (France) A bench in east Paris “lives its last days” with the construction of the new tramway. Young people hand out there for “nightly jousts”, through which they deliver, between reveries and disillusions, a rich testimony on their way of “living” their neighbourhood. 15.50/ TR: A Qui Appartient La Terre Dir: Le Doan Hong 54' (France) Ιn the agricultural region of Quang Nam, a few kilometres away a region that saw some of the bloodiest battles of the Vietnam war, the State has decided on the implantation of vast touristic complexes, forcing the villagers to quit their lands. 16.45/ PA: Being Anthropologist, the Happiness of the Masters Dir: Soledad Gesteira & Soledad Torres Aguero 30' (Argentina) A documentary that explores, with an intimate gaze, the work of some of the pioneers of anthropology in Argentina. Through a series of interviews conducted in their homes, we discover the various forms of what it means to be anthropologist in this country. 17.15/ PA: Lettre á Mohamed Dir: Christine Moderbacher 35' (Belgium) Filmed during the first year after the Tunisian Revolution, the film is a poetic journey through a troubled country, a compilation of episodic fragments about the aftermath of a revolution, intercut with a letter about the personal impressions of the filmmaker’s journey.




18.00/ Simeon Magliveras Presentation 19.00/ PA: Rest of Athens Dir: Orsalia Kassaveti 32’ (Greece) - Filmmaker in attendance The story of Agiannis Theologos inspects the historical and social course of the Aghios Ioannis Theologos district in Peristeri. Starting at the local fair in honour of the saint’s namesake and, through personal interviews with locals, certain traces of older social organization are found. 19.45/ SP: At Seventeen Dir: Dimitris Gouvis, Christos Sigalos, Athanasia Papachristodoulou 11' (Greece) Two 17 year old boys live in a boarding house since before their teens. In one year they will leave the house to find their way in their adult lives. The film records their thoughts, worries and expectations. Health without Borders Dir: Maria Papathanasiou 10’ (Greece) - Filmmakers in attendance Healthcare: a right for everyone or a privilege for the chosen few? You migrate to a foreign country in search of a better life. What happens, though, when you’re shut out of the public health system of that country when you need it the most? 20.30/ TR: Kavourniarides Dir: Alida Dimitriou 30’ (Greece) Working in coal is one of the professions that have nowadays disappeared because of the rapid technological progress in the industrial area. The film touches on the survival issues faced by the coal merchants, as well as its producers, the true coalers. Spata Dir: Alida Dimitriou 22’ (Greece) This film describes the custom called “Saint Peter’s stew” and is celebrated in Spata on Saint Peter and Paul’s day. The year the film was shot, in 1978, the custom took on a loaded socio-political meaning. It was linked with the locals’ protests against the government’s decision to move the airport to Spata.




21.30/ PA: Broken Vows Dir: Kaska Butkiewicz-Phuntsok 20' (U.K.) In the traditional Tibetan community boys are very often sent to a monastery to learn Buddhist philosophy, a chance to gain education and earn modest means of subsistence. The film is an interview with three ex-monks, who share their personal experience about the monastic life, their transition into secularity and their dilemmas related to that change. 21.50/ ST: Women Moving Forward Dir: Tanja Wol Sorensen 27' (U.K.) There are more than 500,000 domestic workers living in Spain today. The large majority are migrant women from Latin American countries. Through the stories of three Latin American women living in Barcelona, we get an insight into the reality of being a migrant woman and a domestic worker in Spain today. 22.20/ PA: The Chairman and the Lions Dir: Peter Biella 46' (U.S.A.) The film provides a glimpse into the current world of Maasai, some of whom, because of political, social and economic changes in East Africa, have been forced to adopt a sedentary lifestyle. The Maasai leader of a Tanzanian village battles many lions that threaten his community: 'bush' lawyers, land grabbers, migration, and lack of education. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ST:STUDENT FILMS / PA:PANORAMA / TR:TRIBUTE / SP:SPECIAL SCREENING




For more information: Konstantinos Aivaliotis – Nikos Sfakianakis Tel.: +30 210 6544917 / 6945104788 Email: [email protected]/[email protected] www.ethnofest.gr Exile Room 12 Athinas St, 3rd Floor, Monastiraki (opposite the Metro Stop) Tel: 210-3223395 *Admission: Free There will be only English subtitles in the films. Screenings start at 17:00

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4th athens ethnographic film festival - screening schedule

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