MAGNIFICIENT SEVEN 2008 - European feature documentary film festival - Belgrade
One should go for innovation but also honour roots and tradition - this is what we do in Belgrade year after year with a festival that carries the name of a mainstream American movie but has its focus on poetry and independent, personal storytelling.
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- DirectorPernille Rose GrønkjærStarsSister AmbrosijaMr. VigThe story about the 82-year-old bachelor Mr. Vig, who has never known love, and Sister Amvrosija, a young Russian nun, who by chance, or destiny, becomes part of his life.Mr Vig, hero of this movie, bought a castle in the Danish country side a long time ago and had a wish to turn it into a monastery. It has been fifty years since then, and suddenly, like in fairy tales, his dream begins to come true. Directly from Moscow, the nuns start coming as official delegates of Russian ortodox church with the intention of making it all happen. Mr Vig's lonely life begins to change drastically. In the clash of cultures, mentality and sexes, the 82 year old dreamer will have to find out that the road of his dream‘s fulfillment is a lot different than he ever imagined. The young Danish director, Pernille Rose Grřnkjćr, has spent seven years working on this unique project. "My starting point was a deeply felt admiration for Mr.Vig: a romantic image of an old man who stubbornly followed his heart and dream. In the process of filming I discovered his pain and shortcomings and I realized the conflict of his romantic dream. This changed my perspective.“ „The Monastery“ has been screened at all big European and festivals all over the world, starting from the biggest one in Amsterdam, followed by Sundance, Chicago, Sydney and the great film festival in Moscow, and it was recently declared the Best Danish documentary film in 2007.
- DirectorAndrey PaounovA small town and its hopeful citizens are about to embark on a bright new journey. Massive rusty cranes, foreign investors, and the joyful chants of cheerleaders carry the dream of a great nuclear future. Disturbed only by gigantic stinging mosquitoes, the townsfolk celebrate the atomic hurray by engraving the nuclear power plant logo on buildings and soup bowls. Amidst the apparent atomic prosperity, lies a past that no one wants to remember. An island holding terrifying secrets. Stories of shocking and horrible crimes loom on the city just like the dark clouds of mosquitoes descending on its citizens. A world instantly transformed by ideologies, regimes and dreams of economic prosperity. The tales of characters whose lives intersect in a sinister past, nuclear future and the stinging mosquitoes flying through time, sealing their fate together. From the team behind the IDFA Silver Wolf award-winner "Georgi and the Butterflies".Made in a Fellini spirit, this structurally unusual film developes before us a gallery of strange characters and even stranger stories. A little town, somewhere in Bulgaria, is under attacks of mosquito swarms and everyone is forced to defend himself in his own way. And just about when you think that their problems are huge and almost unberable, the emence "ghosts" start to emerge from the darkness like in a thriller or a horror movie. Followed by piano sounds and dishevelled narrator, near the rusty cranes, along with cheerleaders' singing and in the shadow of a mountain big phantom nuclear power plant, through the waste island of horror, where the cows and sheep walk and the gigantic buzzing mosquitos bring with their stings the destinies of our heroes closer together. A whole little world which is currently converted by ideologies, regimes and dreams of economical prosperity. “Alternativly delightful and disturbing.” The film has been screened at the Cannes Film Festival and got a highly important "John Grierson" award in London. It is a daring, modern author’s attempt, and it has been made as one of the biggest coproductions in Europe last year.
- DirectorCarles BoschEach September, the inmates from Madrid's prison system gather in Soto de Real penitentiary for the Festival of Song. This intimate, experiential documentary follows the love stories of eight participants over the course of one year.Every September, behind bars of the "Soto de Real" prison in Madrid, the Festival of Song which is an extremly popular karaoke contest, takes place. The festival participants are prisoners who come from different jails in Spain. They are the protagonists of this film. The festival is the starting point from which we enter the prisoner’s life of four men and four women and the intimate world of their relationships. Love or lack of love, the universal alomodovarian eruption of emotion, lets us come closer to the penitentiary drama from an aspect we can all understand. There, the year’s length is being measured from September to September, from the last to the next festival - this film describes true, deep, exciting love stories - how they develop and how they fall apart. A film by a significant Spanish documentarist Carles Bosch brings us the world of abandoned and condemned as the world of people in love and love as a deeper meaning of human existence.
- DirectorIgor HeitzmannStarsIgor HeitzmannRenate HeitzmannStaatskapelle BerlinA film about a conductor and love in divided Germany, told by a son who is looking for music to find his father.The unusual father-son adventure. The film author, son of a famous conductor of East Berlin State Orchestra, Otmar Suitner, tries to relive and regain the important and missing moments of his own childhood. He invites his father on a journey through time and space. In this brilliant musical and film search, like in a symphony, all the important themes are being discussed: the successful career of a great conductor, personal view of music and family memories through a prism of irony regarding recent German history. A surprisingly open dialog between father and son reveals the unusual craft of balancing through life - between Communists and West, between personal life and career, between a wife and a mistress. Under the guidance of two great masters, the musician and the filmmaker, father and son, in the rhytm of fusion of the perfect shots and lavishing, exciting music, we enjoy in this fascinating revelation of time, people, beauty and love. The film has been screened and awarded at big festivals, such as Leipzig, Lisbon, Montreal and in Museum of Modern Arts in New York. This is the best documentary film in Germany in 2007.
- DirectorRaúl de la FuentePablo IraburuHarkaitz Martinez de San VicenteStarsHarkaitz Martinez de San VicenteIgor OtxoaNömadak Tx is a road movie documentary of Igor Otxoa and Harkaitz Mtnez. de San Vicente of the Basque Country in Spain who take their ancient Txalaparta percussion instrument to native peoples in India, the Arctic Circle, Mongolia, Algeria, and the Saharan Desert.A film which takes us on a journey all around the planet in a fantastic rhytm of images and primary sound of a unique archaic instrument - txalaparta. Just like in fairy tales, this journey begins when two young Basque men, musicians Harkaitz Martinez and Igor Otxoa, inspire life to simple pieces of wood. The uniqueness of txalaparta is that it has to be played by two people and the music is made through a dialog of two musicians. They expand the dialog and spread it around the world - from India to Lapland, through Mongolian plains and Africa. In search of new sounds they go through icy wastelands, Siberian mountains, burning hot deserts. During this great adventure the leading characters meet musicians of various cultures and they join their celebration of sound. Thus, through encounters and clashes, amazing music of extraordinary rhytm is being created and becomes a unique dialog of the planet. Film was made as a colective work, as a dialog, between musicians of the “Oreka Tx“, Harkaitz Martinez and Igor Otxoa, with Pablo Iraburu and Raul de la Fuente. “Nömadak Tx” became a favourite to audience at all important festivals worldwide. The film kept on going where the heroes left off and so the journey continues.
- DirectorNatasa von KoppStarsMiroslav TichýA young German author, impressed by photographs of a Czech photographer, goes with his friend's recommendation to visit him. She was welcomed with a combination of the worst rude words. So it all began. This is a film about an old man with no needs and a remarkable past, facing the hype as an artist against his will. There isn't any important city in the world where his unusual work hasn't been exhibited. In this very moment some of the leading metropolis' galleries are exhibiting, for amazed visitors, the photographs taken with the strangest camera ever made. But, while in the art circles worldwide his photos cost up to 12 000 Euros, Miroslav Tichý lives alone in an old, waste house, isolated from the world, surrounded with only a few friends. "They should have come earlier, now it's too late." - he said refusing to talk about the fame. The German director Natasa von Kopp discovers for us the new "Tichý Ocean" in the middle of Europe in the beginning of 21st century. And this film's discovery is as amazing and thrilling as the great discoveries of new seas and continents.A young German author, impressed by photographs of a Czech photographer, goes with his friend’s recommendation to visit him. She was welcomed with a combination of the worst rude words. So it all began. This is a film about an old man with no needs and a remarkable past, facing the hype as an artist against his will. There isn’t any important city in the world where his unusual work hasn’t been exbited. In this very moment some of the leading metropolis' galleries are exhibiting, for amazed visitors, the photographs taken with the strangest camera ever made. But, while in the art circles worldwide his photos cost up to 12 000 Euros, Miroslav Tichý lives alone in an old, waste house, isolated from the world, surrounded with only a few friends. "They should have come earlier, now it’s too late." - he said refusing to talk about the fame. The German director Nataša von Kopp discovers for us the new "Tichý Ocean" in the middle of Europe in the begining of 21st century. And this film’s discovery is as amazing and thrilling as the great disoveries of new seas and continents.
- DirectorAudrius StonysAccording to the old stories, written about 300 years ago, during the Lithuanian - Swedish war, the bell from the bell tower of Plateliai Church has been removed and taken off. It was carried away across the frozen lake, but the ice cracked near the Kastel island and the bell sank. One hundred years later a snorkeling expedition went on a search for the bell. It has been told that they found it, but for inexplicable reasons, they let it sink again.According to the old stories, written about 300 years ago, during the Lithuanian - Swedish war, the bell from the bell tower of Plateliai Church has been removed and taken off. It was carried away across the frozen lake, but the ice cracked near the Kastel island and the bell sank. One hundred years later a snorkeling expedition went on a search for the bell. It has been told that they found it, but for inexplicable reasons, they let it sink again. It has been told that the sound of a submerged bell can be heard from the lake’s depth. In the Summer of 2006, the film crew, along with a snorkeling team, went on a search for the legendary bell. This diving into the still water of the mythical lake was a motive for the search through the time dimension and through shady silhouettes of memory and ancient tales. Audrius Stonys is one of the few authors of documentaries who pushes the limits of documenting the world. He penetrates behind the surface of reality and tries to transform simple actions into fantastic sights allowing us to take a glimpse into the methaphysical world. This is an extraordinary author’s quest for the other side, for the power of believing, for the long gone values of old times.