Director: Christian Lelong, Pierre Mortimore Country: France/ Switzerland/ Niger Year: 2003 Length: 75
Radio Nomad FM is a local radio station serving the Nigerian desert city of Agadez, and some 50 km beyond. The station broadcasts cultural and educational programs and news. Quite popular with the locals, it has some influence on people. Contrary to the title, the main focus of the film is not the radio station, but the people and their stories. Agadez used to be a major trade center. Blacks, Tuaregs, nomads and sedentaries, Muslims and animists have always lived together more or less peacefully. The result is an open-minded city, and a self-conscious community. In Agadez, there is competition between conservatism and adaptation. There is tradition and there is change. The film explores people’s concerns related to social change, the role of women, religion, tradition and their relation to the modern world. The authors share with the viewer their personal experience in the process of getting to know the people of Agadez: “They seemed complete strangers to us at first, and then we found them to be quite close to us, having the same concerns as ourselves and our neighbours back home. Only the social rules are different.”
What can a woman do when she is desperate to have children, and it just does not happen? Artificial insemination could be an answer. From a medical point of view, artificial insemination it is a relatively simple procedure. Few people realize, though, what an immense pressure it puts on the couple, and especially on the prospective mother. The film is about a woman, who decides that having a baby would be the most important thing in her life. There are repeated unsuccessful attempts. There is hope, despair, and then hope again. The film offers quite an intimate view on the personal drama of the characters, as the couple in question are the director himself and his wife. Shot during an extensive period of time, the film follows all the stages of the medical procedure and its emotional implication. The director goes beyond his personal story to explore the differences between men and women’s reactions to fertility treatments.
Ambassadors
Director: Jouko Aaltonen Country: Finland Year: 2004 Length: 57
The film explores the life of modern nomads: the diplomats, a tribe sharing common rituals, beliefs and even a common language. Following the routine of the Ambassador of Finland in New Delhi, the filmmaker reveals a glimpse of the diplomats and their families, which is unknown to the public. Beyond the glamorous parties and the official meetings, there is plenty of hard work, and worries. Encountering a new world and culture is also an issue, especially for the ambassador’s children. Conflicts between India and Pakistan, merely news items for most of us, directly affect the every day life of this family. After years of anthropological field research with nomads in Siberia, in Tuva and in India, Jouko Aaltonen turns his camera towards Western “nomads” who are exposed to non-Western cultures. “For me” declares the filmmaker “it is a film about facing another culture. And about nomadism. After all, aren’t we all a little bit nomad?”
Blood Engagement
Director: Ada Ushpiz Country: Israel Year: 2004 Length: 90
The film follows the stories of two Ethiopian men, who are inmates in Israeli prisons. They have both been convicted of murder. One of them killed his mistress. The other stabbed his wife twelve times. 80% of the Ethiopian male immigrants in Israel are convicted for domestic violence against women. Tracing the stories of the convicts and the families of their victims, the film highlights the acute issues of immigration. The Israeli immigration policy has attracted large numbers of Ethiopians, who have brought along their own social and cultural norms. Unemployment, poverty, alienation and racism are not likely to make them feel better in their new environment. Consequently, the more the Ethiopian women taste the freedom offered by modern Israeli society, the more their men hold fast to their traditional privileges. The film explores the position of an immigrant cultural minority as opposed to the cultural background of the host country.
Dharavi in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) is Asia's largest slum. Squeezed between the skyscrapers of a business district and a classy suburb, one million people live in shanties crowding on a surface less than two hundred hectars wide. For many, the district is merely a reminder that, despite impressive economic growth in recent years, India remains a very poor country. But for its residents, Dharavi is more than that. It is an affordable place to live, and to work. The film explores the work of two social activists using western European methods in dealing with conflict resolutions in the neighbourhood peace committees, juxtaposing their direct experience of Dharavi with the traditional middle class perceptions of slums in general and of Dharavi in particular as a hotbed for crime and filth. The multilayered structure of the film is a challenge to a critical and active viewership.
The Country Where The Soil Lived
Director: Vincent Froehly Country: France Year: 2001 Length: 94
Shot in a village, in the Maramures region, in northwestern Romania, the film explores the mutations that have recently occurred in rural life. Until not very long ago, the villagers have kept the slow pace of past centuries. They have worked the land without mechanized help, manually pulled water from wells, and, ordered their life according to centuries-old secular and religious rituals. Today, their minds are oriented towards modernization, change, and the European Union. The film intimately observes the impact of change on the life of one family in the village. Undoubtedly, the old world will eventually disappear, to be replaced by a more comfortable modern life. What the latter will bring about, and what price the people will have to pay for the advantages of modernization, is difficult to predict.
Director: Martin Gruber Country: Germany Year: 2003 Length: 21
It is common belief in Western culture that you have to “let go” when a loved one dies. The sooner the better, as you must return to “normal life”. Some people, though, are not willing to “let go” so easily. For them, the social relationship with the deceased does not stop with the funeral. Cemeteries are social spaces, where the living interacts among themselves and with the dead. The film, shot at a Victorian cemetery in London, explores the different ways in which people remember and commemorate their deceased family and friends. They tend their graves, bring flowers and presents, and talk to their dearly departed as if they were alive. The characters speak freely of their mourning, and about the critical moment in their lives when they had to part with a loved one, a moment we have all experienced or will experience sometime.
The Day I Will Never Forget
Director: Kim Longinotto Country: U.K. Year: 2002 Length: 92
The film explores the practice of female circumcision within different Kenyan and Somali communities. The practice is part of female initiation ceremonies and varies from relatively minor surgery to the complete removal of the clitoris, and the sewing up of the vagina. To Western culture this is mutilation. For the locals, it is an ancient tradition that should by no means be abandoned. The world, however, is changing and new generations begin to question tradition and rebel against circumcision. Meanwhile, the older women in the community praise circumcision as a way to purity and health. A female doctor attempts to achieve a compromise and open people’s minds to accepting safer and less painful medical procedures. The film follows the stories of young girls who are caught between loyalty to their parents, the desire to rebel against old customs, and the fear that in doing so they will be rejected by their community. An extreme situation is that of a young girl who takes her own parents to court to stop them from having her circumcised. This event has historic implications for the entire cultural group. The confrontation between tradition and change is not yet over.
Dead Presumed Missing?
Director: Colette Piault, Paul Sant Cassia Country: France/UK Year: 2003 Length: 40
About two thousand people dissapeared in Cyprus between 1963 and 1974. One third are Turks, and the remaining are Greek Cypriots. The issue of the missing persons in Cyprus has remained obscure to this day. The film investigates the destiny of the missing persons in both sides. Were they killed? When and under what circumstances? Where are their remains buried? Stories of the families of the missing persons are corroborated with statements of the officials. To this day, the fate and whereabouts of the missing persons on both sides has remained an official secret. By following the desperate attempts of two Greek Cypriot women to discover what happened to their loved ones, the film explores the significance of mortuary rituals, and the political lives of the dead bodies of both the Greek and the Turkish Cypriots.
Dhobighat
Director: Giorgio Garini Country: Switzerland/ Italy Year: 2004 Length: 48
The film focuses on an Indian institution, which, like many others, tends to be regarded with disbelief by Westerners. Dhobighats are the world’s largest open-air laundries. In many Indian cities, people do not wash their laundry at home. It is the job of the dhobi wallahs, i.e. the laundrymen. In Mumbay (formerly Bombay), four thousand dhobi wallahs wash, air, press and deliver the clothes of 15 million inhabitants. The dhobi wallahs have acquired certain fame, due to travel guides and tourist magazines accounts. Remarkably, their mysterious system allows them to identify every piece of clothing, in immense piles of laundry, and deliver it back to the right owner. The story goes that even the police sometimes use the dhobi marks in tracking down criminals. Still, the dhobi wallahs are considered low class citizens, and they are trapped in this hereditary occupation. Giorgio Garini’s film has the merit to go beyond the exotic and spectacular appearance, to tell the story of these people.
Heaven in A Garden
Director: Stéphane Breton Country: France Year: 2003 Length: 63
After several years of research, Stephane Breton produces his second documentary on the people of a small valley in the New Guinea highlands. The filmmaker’s approach is personal and intimate. He believes neither in the objectivity of the camera, nor the non-intrusive presence of a researcher among the people he studies. He found it impossible to be simply a transparent observer, someone who can watch what is going on without becoming part of the show. The author focuses on his relationship with the local people rather than on ethnographic description. Political circumstances will soon prevent him from returning to the field regularly, as he once had. Heaven in a Garden is, therefore, his farewell to a research field, which had become his home, and to the people who had been his neighbors and friends for many years.
Intercession Of The Virgin Day of The Kiliny Family
Director: Leonid Filimonov Country: Russia Year: 2002 Length: 33
The film introduces the Kiliny family, focusing on the patriarchal figure of Anany Kleonovich Kilin, a philosopher, a writer, and the spiritual leader of one of the most viable communities of Old Believers in Russia.
The Old Believers, also known as Old Ritualists, came into existence in the 17th century, when a part of the Russian population refused to adopt the imposed changes in the traditional Russian Orthodox practices. They were harshly persecuted under the tsars and later, and many of their communities lived in almost complete isolation for centuries. After several unsuccessful attempts, Anany Kleonovich finally found a place to settle with his family, in the suburbs of a southern city. In time, more and more relatives, and members of the old believers community joined them. The film shows them as they prepare and celebrate the feast of the Intercession of the Virgin, which coincides with Anany Kleonovich’s birthday. It is the portrait of a lively community gathered around a powerful and charismatic man, whose spirit has not been defeated by the crucibles in his life.
Angus Macqueen’s three-part series follows the human stories of three Romanian families torn apart by the realities of migration. The remote village of Budesti in Northern Romania is a world of of the past, filled with horses and carts, and medieval beliefs. But the young villagers see no romance in their existence. Their eyes are turned to the modern world of the West. In Budesti, every family has an illegal immigrant abroad. After exploring in Journeys the realities facing the immigrants, Temptation observes the clash of cultures, and the expectations of different generations in rural Romania. Finally, A Good Wife focuses on the impact of migration on the local community. Observational, up-close, and touching, the film looks at the changes imposed on the local community by the collapse of Communism and the new relationship with Western Europe. At the same time, The Last Peasants depicts the agony of the peasant culture that has survived two World Wars and half a century of communism, but is threatened with extinction after just a decade of democracy.
Masters and Slaves
Director: Bernard Debord Country: France Year: 2001 Length: 84
The story takes place in the present time, in the immense semi-desert of the Sahel region of Niger. It presents a world governed by rules inconceivable by Western culture. Slavery is supposed to belong to the remote past, and yet in Sahel it is still a way of life. This state of affairs is made possible by two perpetual principles: the immutability of the social position and the loyalty to an extremely rigorous form of Islam.
The film is built around two human adventures. Tumajet is 26. She has just run away from the Tuareg master to whom she was enslaved since early childhood. Her daughter though has remained in her former master’s servitude. Boulboulou is 20 and she has fled the cruelty of her Arab master two years ago, but she still fears his revenge. Both women are black. They share the courage of having rebelled against slavery. Timidria, a local alliance, will help them confront their former masters.
The film follows the camel trails across the desert to enter the heart of an unknown world: the world of slavery and of the complex relationships between masters and slaves.
The New Boys
Director: David macDougall Country: Australia Year: 2003 Length: 100
The social dynamics of the group is the focus of this film on life in a school dormitory, the latest in MacDougall’s long-term study of childhood and adolescence at the Doon School in northern India. The school is India’s foremost boarding school for boys, and this film provides unique insights into the values and training of the Indian middle class and postcolonial elites more generally. Within the group are boys of varied personalities and backgrounds—some natural leaders, some subject to teasing and bullying, some argumentative, some peace-makers. An important feature of the film is the inclusion of conversations among the boys about the causes of aggression and warfare, homesickness, restaurant food, and how to speak to a ghost. This film is part of the Doon school series, an extensive video project started in 1997, which has resulted in five films focusing on various aspects of childhood and adolescence, masculinity, the social aesthetics of institutions, postcoloniality, and the training of South Asian elites.
About 18,000 Tibetans live in exile in Kathmandu, Nepal. Most of them know of Tibet only from their parents’ stories. Anthropologist Berit Madsen presents a series of three films, each focusing on the individual experience of young Tibetan exiles.
I live in the White Monastery is the portrait of a 12-year old monk, who tells the story of his escape from Tibet and reflects on his life at the monastery.
The story of My Father’s Prayer Room, features an 18-year old girl, who lives in a boarding school in India. She returns to Kathmandu to celebrate the Tibetan New Year together with her family, and explains the daily Tibetan religious rituals.
The Day of Hundred Thousand Lamps brings to light the preparations for the celebration of an important Tibetan Buddhist God. 100,000 butterlamps must be placed throughout the stupa, which is the monument housing Buddhist relics. The children, who distribute these lamps, clearly take great pride in their work.
Beyond the individual experiences, the three portraits tell a single story about exile, Tibetan identity, and human nature.
ASTRA FILM manages an extensive documentary film collection with public screening facilities. The ASTRA FILM archive started in 1990, and it has collected since thousands of documentaries produced in over 70 countries.
Due to our focus on the Eastern European and Romanian production, the ASTRA FILM archive holds a unique collection of documentaries documenting the issues of post-communism and transition in the region.
Fundatia Soros Romania lanseaza concursul de film de scurtmetraj Open Society Shorts. Deadline: 3 mai 2010
ASTRA FILM promovează documentarul românesc la UCLA Film and Television Archive din Los Angeles
