Time for rivals: 9th Eberswalde International Film Festival

dokumentART 2012: 14.11.2012, Wednesday, 14:30
Akademia Sztuki, pl. Orła Białego 2 (where is that?)
Blok tematyczny: Time for Rivals

9th Eberswalde International Film Festival
Province | Films for the province – films about the province
6th–13th October 2012

We all have our own fate. It does not matter whether you live in Shanghai or Trampe. From the day you were born to the day you die you come across disappointment and fulfilment, you stand in the first or the last row, you look for happiness and find life. Films at the Province Festival show just that, and in an assertive way: leaving out the experience of wars and catastrophes – it is impossible to say which place is better.

Provinces, however, are under pressure, their civil-social weaknesses make them susceptible to any possible kind of abuse. However, they can still surprise. In spaces so far from one another there still are cultures full of incredible life force.

Ecology, economy, even freedom and law are doing poorly in places where there are only few inhabitants, but which provide food and energy for everybody. It does not mean that the inhabitants of these areas also hold our fate in their hands. They can only learn about the processes of our times and describe them, as well as try to keep and protect their space for their own vision of life.

Currently there is no medium that would support communication in these regards. With great interest and engagement, both teams and individuals go to provincial areas and accompany the people who live there in order to understand their experiences and share them with us.

This is the idea of the Province Festival: it is not about filling any niche, but about creating an indispensible bond that will connect Shanghai and Trampe. Many films are made here, and very good ones – short and long, animations and documentaries.

The festival will present 65 productions chosen by program committees of particular genres. The program of the 9th Eberswalde International Film Festival will include documentaries, short feature films, and animations. Representatives of over 50 nations will be taking part in the contest, divided into categories. Filmmakers will receive awards amounting to almost 9,000 €.

Another highlight of the festival, next to the presented films, will consist of concerts, evenings with authors, multimedia presentations, and evening talks in the festival club, as well as other events from the program.

Films

  • Deadweight / Balast

    A lonely wanderer struggles to carry his burden – a massive tree trunk, ball and chain, something being born. When his only company – a small bird – suffers abuse from a creature who came out of the burden he carries, our protagonist needs to decide whose company he prefers on his future path. (The reference to the “province” is present in describing a sense of existence, which is pictured through both the internal and the external emigration.)

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  • The last day of Loro Shestani / Ostatni dzień Loro Shestani

    The Albanian transition has compelled Loro Shestani to give up: his wife is dead, his daughter, a refugee in Italy, has forgotten her roots and the sea does not offer fish any more. Loro has passed middle-age and understands that his life is in vain, he cannot cope with this new world. The pigeons are the only companions of his solitude. “The last day of Loro Shestani”, is inspired by real events that occurred in the hot summer of 1994. One afternoon, watching a World Cup football match from USA, I heard a powerful explosion from the building in front of my own. I can still remember the very few and fast frames of the short flight of the man who dynamited himself before falling over the his forth floor balcony. Transformed into a black mess he contrasted with the red background painted by his own blood.

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  • Weemoed & wildernis

    The island Tiengemeten was once reclaimed from the sea and reshaped to provide fertile agricultural land. In the 1990s a decision was made to let the vagaries of nature loose on the island. Making plans, finding replacement farms for the farmers and finding financing took ten years. In 2006 the “reshaping” of the island was started. The asphalt roads were dug up to make way for creeks, trees were felled and new trees were planted, old dikes were removed and new ones created. Digna Sinke follows the changes in the landscape over a period of 13 years, also recollecting the changes in her own life. The signifying themes of the film are temporality and transitoriness.

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how to get there

14.11.2012