Festival Crossroads: DOK Leipzig

Founded in 1955 DOK Leipzig is the oldest festival for documentaries in the world. Among the "founding fathers" and supporters of the first years were doyens of the genre like Joris Ivens, Alberto Cavalcanti, Santiago Alvarez, John Grierson, Basil Wright, Henri Storck and the young Chris Marker. Thus the festival became a home for the socially committed, artistically demanding documentary – in spite of ubiquitous political instrumentalization. It was always a mirror of GDR foreign policy and its restraints. And yet it often ignored set limitations and created alternative drafts. The festival initiated and showed films on the "national liberation" movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as those on the Vietnam War and the Palestinian crisis, it provided a platform for the filmmakers from those countries and was therefore invaluable for the rising of their cinematographies. Leipzig and its network did also help them with practical support such as providing technical equipment, film material, post production, training or even visas for politically persecuted filmmakers. It was a "window to the world" for East German audiences and the DEFA filmmakers whose films it made known internationally. After the political change in 1989 the festival took a new direction but tried to remain true to itself. It has developed into one of the most dynamic festivals for documentary and animated film – this "twin-track character" also makes it unique in the festival landscape. Traditionally, the Leipzig Festival stands for films advocating peace and human dignity. High-quality art house cinema, superbly narrated stories, a critical eye, subtle observation, tracing back history and scrutinizing the "memory of images" shape the Leipzig Festival’s character and diversity. The programme includes: the International Competitions for documentary and animated Film, the German Competition for Documentary Film , the International Young Talent Documentary Competition, Information and Special Programmes as well as rich historical Retrospectives (e.g. in 2009 dedicated to Joris Ivens). Euros 56,500 in prize-money are awarded. Under the title "DOK Industry" the festival provides networking opportunities for film-makers, producers and international industry professionals, financing opportunities for new film ideas, arranges coproductions and presents recently completed productions to festival programme organisers, distributors and TV buyers. Among the more than 30.000 visitors watching about 350 films from 50 countries in five days are 1.700 professionals from all over the world. The films DOK Leipzig presents at Verzio in Budapest give an insight into the variety of themes and cinematic languages it stands for today like the impressive long term study of an East German family by Thomas Heise, the excellently photographed story of a Russian mother by Pavel Kostomarov/Antoine Cattin, the search for the victim of stoning in Afghanistan (the country Leipzig dedicated a focus this year) by Krzysztof Kopczyn'ski or the brave exposure of oppression of the freedom of speech in China by Liu Wei. Nothing less than "the heART of documentary".

DOK Leipzig team

The program

Children. As Time Flies / Kinder. Wie die Zeit vergeht
Thomas Heise / Germany / 2007 / 86 min / German
A close-up of teenage brothers from Halle-Neustadt, Germany: Paul excels in studies and football while Tommy struggles with school and makes friends with a neo-Nazi.

Children. As Time Flies is the third film in Thomas Heise’s “Jammed”- Trilogy about families from Halle-Neustadt, Germany. Now the director focuses on one family: Jeanette and her two sons Paul and Tommy, her parents and her youngest brother Tino. Everybody seems to have gone their own way: Jeanette has a daughter, a lasting relationship and a job as a bus driver, as she always wanted. Paul excels in school and football, unlike his brother Tommy, who fights his way through life and struggles to stay in school at all. He has severed all contact with his mother. Jeanette’s parents have moved to the countryside and rarely communicate with their daughter. With them lives Tino, who identifies himself as a Nazi but can’t talk to his father about it. Today’s footage is intercut with material from 1999 and creates a picture of speechlessness and stagnation. A social close-up of an ordinary family. Life as it flows.

producer: Heino Deckert
editor: Karin Schöning, Trevor Hall
camera: Börres Weiffenbach
sound: Uve Haußig

sales info:
Deckert Distribution GmbH
Marienplatz 1
04103 Leipzig, Germany
tel: + 49 (0)341 215 66 38
fax: + 49 (0)341 215 66 39
email: info@deckert-distribution.com

selected filmography:
Lucky (Niggers), 2006 / My Brother. We’ll Meet Again, 2005 / The Foreigner, 2004 / Fatherland, 2002 / Jammed – The State of Things, 2000 / Inventor, 1982

A Day to Remember / Wangque de Yitian
Liu Wei / China / 2005 / 13 min / Mandarin
4th June 2005. Could this be an anniversary date? In Beijing, passers-by are reluctant to remember what happened 16 years ago.

It is 4 June 2005. The cineaste Liu Wei picks up his camera and sets off for Tiananmen Square and the University of Beijing with a question in his head: day is it? As he poses this question to the various students and people that he encounters on his way, he receives countless evasive replies and the refusal of majority to recall the student protests 16 years earlier. Many affirm that they not know anything about those events and move swiftly onwards while others only to stare at the camera. A Day to Remember reflects the great unease surrounding the date of 4 June and how the uprising of that period still remains taboo subject in the People’s Republic of China. Nevertheless, this film by Liu breaks with that silence and explores an entire nation’s feelings of denial.

producer: Liu Wei
editor: Liu Wei
camera: Liu Wei

sales info:
L’est Films Group
40, Rue Remy Dumoncel
75014 Paris
France
tel: + 33 669 347437
l.estfilms@gmail.com

Don’t Get Me Wrong / Nu te supara, dar...
Adina Pintilie / Romania / 2007 / 50 min / Romanian
Patients of a Romanian psychiatric hospital debate the weather, God, and other forces they are in daily contact with.

"How do you stop the rain?" one of the patients in a psychiatric hospital in Romania repeatedly asks his discussion partner. The latter explains that he is in close touch with God and that he is a supernatural being. But his inquiring friend is not easily convinced. Both men suffer from schizophrenia and spend their days in the clinic endlessly repeating the same discussions. Other patients keep themselves busy by compulsively moving pebbles, staring at liquid projections on the wall, or patiently caring for fellow patients. Without comment, the camera registers everything, pausing at the details: water dripping from the shower head in the bare white-tiled bathroom, a drainpipe attached to the outer wall, the reflection of the air in the puddles in the concrete courtyard. Days go by filled with routine and endless conversations about life, death, God, and the weather forecast. What is divine and what is not? Who brings and who stops the rain? What is normal and what is not? In a contemplative and refined way the film follows the daily life of a community that shows profound humaneness in an inhuman setting.

producer: Dan Nutu
editor: Ligia Smarandach, Tudor Petre
camera: Sorin Gociu
sound: Ligia Smarandach, Tudor Petre

production info:
Aristoteles Workshop Association
dan@aworkshop.com
www.dont-get-me-wrong.com

selected filmography:
Sand Pit #186, 2007 / The Fear of Mr. G, 2006 / Nea Pintea...the Model, 2005 / Some Kind of Loneliness, 2005

Drifter
Sebastian Heidinger / Germany / 2007 / 80 min / German
Three young homeless drug addicts at Berlin’s Bahnhof Zoo station. Is there a way out?

The ordinary life of three young homeless people who live by Berlin’s Bahnhof Zoo station. Aileen (16), Angel (23) and Daniel (25) escaped from the remnants of their families and the confines of their small towns to the anonymity of the metropolis. They work as prostitutes to support their drug addiction. At night, they find shelter in halfway houses, in the homes of acquaintances or with regular clients. They have hopes and dreams and a vague plan for their lives, but one which remains a construction site, much like their world: a universe of transitions, unstable in-betweens, the highways, the back ways, the stores, niches, and places of transit. Sebastian Heidinger followed these young people for a period of nine months. The camera soberly and persistently records their unbearable reality – from shooting up heroin in the station toilets, and looking for a place to sleep, to their contacts with “customers” and emergency doctors. A film about a hopeless present and a future that is not much brighter.

producer: Nils Boekamp
editor: Alexander Fuchs
camera: Henner Besuch
sound: Johannes Schmelzer-Ziringer

production info:
Boekamp und Freunde Filmproduction
Goethestrasse 45
D- 32584 Löhne
tel: 0049.5731.788 525
fax: 0049.5731.788 510
www.boekampfilm.de
info@boekampfilm.de

Mother / La mère
Antoine Cattin & Pavel Kostomarov / Switzerland & France & Russia / 2007 / 80 min / Russian
With her nine children she ran away from her violent husband. Her eldest son is in jail, her daughter just gave birth. Portrait of a mother.

A lyrical and compelling portrait of Liuba, a single, working-class mother of nine in rural Russia. In Russian, Liubov means "love", and while she often curses at her children, her affection is obvious. To have many children is the only one of Lyuba’s dreams that came true. With the support of her eldest daughter she raises them in a remote village. The youngest have to be looked after first and right afterwards hard work is waiting in the cowshed – carrying heavy sacks, feeding, clearing out the shed. Later she goes back to the children, to check their multiplication tables, to wash and feed them. Men are non-existent or drunk, they too need to be looked after. An endless cycle that cannot even be broken with her own sons. Liubov is always on the move, whether she is running away from her violent husband or to her eldest son in jail, or visiting her daughter in the maternity ward, yet still able to cry with joy when the tenth child is born.

producer: Elena Hill
editor: Antoine Cattin, Pavel Kostomarov
camera: Antoine Cattin, Pavel Kostomarov
sound: Antoine Cattin, Adrien Kessler, Pavel Kostomarov
music: Thierry van Osselt, Alexander J.S. Cracker

production info:
Les Films Hors-Champ
L'Epignau 1
CH-1373 Chavornay
tel: ++ 4121 550 36 40
films@hors-champ.ch

selected filmography:
Antoine Cattin & Pavel Kostomarov: Vivre en paix, 2004 / Transformator, 2003

Stone Silence / Kamienna cisza
Krzysztof Kopczynski / Poland & USA / 2007 / 52 min / Dari
In the spring of 2005, a 29 year-old woman was publicly stoned for adultery in the Afghan village of Spingul. Were there any witnesses?

In April 2005, a young woman called Amina, suspected of adultery, was killed in the village of Spingul, northern Afghanistan. With the help of witnesses and family, Stone Silence attempts to reconstruct the story of Amina’s life and death, starting with her ‘arranged marriage’ to Muhammad, who left to find work in Iran right after the wedding. Amina died, but no one admitted guilt. Her parents, the village elders, the mullahs, the investigating police and the judge, who held an office at the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission – all have their own versions of the story. Even the mother of the fugitive Karim, who was said to have had an affair with Amina, hesitates over what to say and what not, unaware of the fact that the camera is still running. An attempt to get an insight into the hierarchy of Afghan values.

producer: Krzysztof Kopczynski
editor: Anna Dymek
camera: Jacek Petrycki , Hanna Polak
sound: Jarosław Roszyk, Jafar Panahi
music: Krzysztof Knittel

production info:
Eureka Media
Smulikowskiego 13/10
00-384 Warsaw, Poland
tel: +48 22 828 48 10
fax: +48 22 829 56 73
info@ntcm.com.pl