Films

• Warmth / Ciepło21'

  BLR 2012, 21’

  A poetic documentary story, mainly using pictures with scarcely any colours (which are the more effective in the otherwise gloomy surroundings), tells of a felt factory for valenki. The whole technical process – from the “bathing” of the wool fibres in water, to the cutting of the boot shape from the prepared material – is depicted in the form of a trance-like visual sequence, accompanied by the sound of working machines. The close-ups of the workers are like counterpoint. Everything around them is steaming with heat. The valenki factory in Smilovichi in Belarus has been operating since 1929.

   

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  Authors:

  • Victor Asliuk
• The High Price of Gold / Wysoka cena złota15'

  GBR 2012, 15’

  A documentary brings us face to face with women from the province Orientale in the Democratic Republic of Congo. If we stay, we have to listen: to how many times, for how long, and how the women and their small daughters have been raped; what they go through afterwards at the hands of their husbands, the community; to stories of murdered husbands, gold, and justice. Their men speak last. In Congo the situation has been unstable for years. The rebels (offenders against the village farmers), supported by neighbouring countries, get rich from the illegal mining of natural resources, mainly coltan – which is used in electronics, weaponry and space travel (the UN forbade its excavation because of the civil war) – and the proverbial gold. In some eastern regions people live on 18 cents a day.

   

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  Authors:

  • Ross Domoney
• Hysterical fantasy / Histeryczna fantazja3'

  FRA 2012, 3’

  The work on the last shot of Muriel Montini's film “To a Distant Land” results in a crazy documentary video. The director's mother – the protagonist of the mysterious final scene – cannot be soothed by an untrustworthy “This is the last one!” The sound engineer clumsily gets caught in the shot and the protagonist wants to attack the camera because she has had enough and feels completely numb! And the last shot goes on... and on... and on...

   

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  Authors:

  • Muriel Montini
• God’s Lake / Niebiańskie Jezioro17'

  POL 2011, 17’

  Contemplative pictures of a lake and everyday activities, Orthodox rituals and songs, transmissions and news from the Euro 2012 – the world of a Ukrainian family living 550 km from Kiev in Volyn Polissya, near the Polish border, filmed a few months ago. The lake: Ukrainian Svitiaz (not to be confused with the Belorussian Svityaz, portrayed in Adam Mickiewicz's poem “Świtezianka”) is the centre of their lives, both earthly and heavenly – as the mother of the family says. And indeed, we are looking at it as if at a perfect universe taken from the descriptions of a mythical world. And Michel Platini is on his way to the airport to meet the authorities...

   

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  Authors:

  • Diana Aszyk
• Dusty Night / Pylista noc20'

  FRA 2011, 20’

  Sand and dust sweepers roam like ghosts through the streets of night-time Kabul. They go to work at dusk and clean the city streets to make them passable. The moon shines over Kabul, the neon lights within it. Constantly breathing in the dust, the sweepers talk: about the good old days when one could make one's way working at a gas station; about the bad new days when not everyone has electricity, and the Taliban are not giving up. “God should not create poor people!”

   

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  Authors:

  • Ali Hazara
• Five Fragments of the Extinct Empathy / Pięć fragmentów wymarłej empatii7'

  FIN 2011, 7’

  A fair-haired girl with an idyllic plain and a folk-song in the background. The girl turns to the camera: a pretty face, a big bruise around the eye. The 1950s, Finland: a woman brutally murdered, a crowd of people at the funeral; another crime: two girls buried in a shallow grave... The creators of the film have gathered drastic examples of crimes and violence against women throughout the years, from the 1950s until present times. With the 1990s, the law and social rules changed in regard to domestic violence: marital rape is qualified as a crime. The pro women’s lobby is trying to surmount the glorification of home and family in all its manifestations: good, bad, criminal. A fair-haired girl, a modern city, an idyllic folk-song...

   

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  Authors:

  • Anna Nykyri
• The Conversation / Rozmowa16'

  POL 2011, 16’

  Agnieszka and Janusz got to know each other by letter while serving the many years of their sentences. They have established a very strong bond. Agnieszka is already allowed out on leave, having served eight years of her long sentence for premeditated murder. “The Conversation” takes place while she’s on leave. That is when she gets to see Janusz for the first time (on a monitor). The screen, divided into two parts, becomes a metaphor for their situation. Agnieszka was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment, Janusz has a life sentence.

   

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  Authors:

  • Piotr Sułkowski