27-05-2020 GIEFF-Films
Keeping the Tradition, Bibliothèque Publique (Public Library), Smart Homes for Seniors, Wawan's Prayer, An Ordinary Life, 164880, Childfree, Parizad, Northern Travelogues, Christmas Dinner, Sharing Boundaries, Family Song, The Mountains Sing, Avatara, The Body Won't Close
Keeping the Tradition
Germany, 2022, 89,5 min
Location: Mexico, United States
A Film by: Beate Engelbrecht
Jesús Nazareno is important to the Patambeños in Mexico and to those who emigrated to the United States. A festival is celebrated in His honor every year, in Mexico and in different locations in the USA. The festival opens up the opportunity to bring people together, locally and virtually, to celebrate Catholic masses, practice traditional dances, and exchange gifts. The film shows the festival as it was celebrated in Florida in 2013. At certain points there are flashbacks to the festival in Patamban in Mexico, as celebrated there in 1998. This makes the differences clear and the effort it takes to transfer a tradition into a new environment.
Screening: 27.05.2022 09:00
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Discussion
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Bibliothèque Publique (Public Library)
Belgium, 2021, 50 min
Location: France
A Film by: Clément Abbey
Every day, regulars, students and random visitors seek refuge at the Bibliothèque Publique d’Information (Public Information Library), in the heart of Paris. Among the crowd, between the bookshelves, along the public walkways, we meet inspired students, knowledgeable aficionados, hardened loners, regulars at a loose end, passionate artists… As they take hold of one of the thousands of cultural resources available, each person ‘inhabits’ the library in their own way. They all share with us how the books, music or videos become a part of them. A public space for private enjoyment, the library is the hub of a discreet, unassuming community.
Website: https://cvb.be/fr/films/bibliotheque-publique
Screening: 27.05.2022 11:00
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Smart Homes for Seniors
Australia, 2021, 32,5 min
Location: Australia
A Film by: Sarah Pink
“Smart Homes for Seniors” joins a group of elders in regional Australia on their journey of living with smart home technologies, in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The film shares the joys, frustration and wisdom of Edna and Bob, Beryl and David, Hilda and Owen, Shirley and John, Helen and Ken and Robert as they and their pets learned to live with digital voice assistants, smart lights, and robotic vacuum cleaners. The voices of seniors need to be accounted for when designing the technologies which will support older generations to stay safe, independent and active at home. The film brings their priorities, needs and experiences into view.
Trailer of Film: https://youtu.be/t-5GfB0srkQ
Screening: 27.05.2022 11:50
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Wawan's Prayer
United States, 2021, 23 min
Location: Indonesia
A Film by: Robert Lemelson, Chisako Yokoyama
Wawan is an autistic boy from Banjarmasin, Indonesia. Struggling to meet his needs at home, his parents make the difficult decision to send him to a brand new school on another island to receive specialized education and therapeutic support. Together Wawan and his teacher, Yasin, learn how to build an inclusive community for youth on the spectrum that accommodates their differences and celebrates their abilities. As the school grows, Wawan matures into a young man respected for his skill in prayer recitation.
Website: https://www.elementalproductions.org/wawans-prayer
Trailer of Film: https://vimeo.com/385116314
Screening: 27.05.2022 12:25
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Discussion
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An Ordinary Life
Israel, 2019, 55 min
Location: Germany, Israel
A Film by: Gili Danon, Efrat Shalom Danon
Fadhumo and Helen seek refuge in Israel and Germany. Each in her own way, they cope with discrimination, foreignness, and a life without roots. Simultaneously, they become close friends and social activists determined to help women like them and provide a better future for coming generations. Between Tel Aviv and Berlin they live under differing regimes – the ‘open door policy’ on one hand; the ‘infiltrators' exile’ on the other. Their fate is identical: an unstable life controlled by government policy, exposed daily to human kindness and cruelty, hoping that despite everything, their dreams may still come true.
Trailer of Film: https://vimeo.com/377312330
Screening: 27.05.2022 14:00
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164880
Russian Federation, 2021, 25 min
Location: Russian Federation
A Film by: Maria Falileeva, Alexandra Matveeva
The heroes of this story are the inhabitants of the village of Purnema, located on the shores of the White Sea. The events of their lives take place in the rhythm of the sea – the tides are replaced by the ebb and nothing can change this order. Kilometers of off-road tracks and the dream of seeing the White Sea becomes true. The North captivates with its unexpectedly bright palette and non-melodic sound. But the same colors can give rise to different sensations and you no longer know where peace ends and anxiety begins.
Screening: 27.05.2022 14:55
Childfree
Iran, Islamic Republic of, 2020, 35 min
Location: Iran, Islamic Republic of
A Film by: Sara Bahramjahan
This documentary is about Iranians who decided not to have children. While facing a range of challenges during the production such as the prohibition of making films about such subjects, “Childfree” gives a voice to women whose ideas are ignored in Iran.
Trailer of Film: https://vimeo.com/706029980
Screening: 27.05.2022 15:20
Parizad
Iran, Islamic Republic of, 2021, 24 min
Location: Iran, Islamic Republic of
A Film by: Mehdi Imani Shahmiri
Keshvar is a lonely old woman crafting an ancient and unknown woven Textile. She tells us a strange story – a tale of a fairy and a Shepherd who came to their village one day...
Trailer of Film: https://vimeo.com/513450794
Screening: 27.05.2022 15:55
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Discussion
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Northern Travelogues
Finland, 2019, 58 min
Location: Russian Federation
A Film by: Kira Jääskeläinen
In 1917, Finnish explorer Sakari Pälsi traveled to north-eastern Siberia, carrying a cinematograph and 13,000 feet of film with him. The journey birthed a unique documentary film and travelogue. A hundred years later, director Kira Jääskeläinen returns to the Bering strait in Pälsi's footsteps. By combining old and new film footage, Pälsi's notes and the stories of the local indigenous peoples, the film tells the story of the Chukchi and Siberian Eskimos from the days gone by till today. “Northern Travelogues” is about building bridges: from Finland to Chukotka, from past to present and present to future.
Website: https://kirajaaskelainen.wixsite.com/home/northern-travelogues
Trailer of Film: https://vimeo.com/294144458
Screening: 27.05.2022 16:55
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Christmas Dinner
Norway, Portugal, 2021, 19 min
Location: Norway, Portugal
A Film by: Frode Storaas, Catarina Alves Costa
From January to Easter, cod move south from the Barents Sea to spawn in the northern Norwegian islands of Lofoten. Most of the catch is exported to Portugal and Brazil. 400000 tons in 2020. The film follows the cod from the sea in Norway to the dinner table in Portugal.
Trailer of Film: https://vimeo.com/708963220
Screening: 27.05.2022 17:55
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Sharing Boundaries
Germany, 2021, 16 min
Location: Germany, Netherlands
A Film by: Katinka Schlette
On maps we draw a border as a line on the edge of a country, dividing it from another. In the landscape itself the line seems invisible. But what do you see when you stand still? “Sharing Boundaries” is a poetic documentary taking you to wondrous, mysterious and absurd places in a Dutch-German border landscape. It is an investigation into what borders are and how they manifest beyond the map.
Website: https://www.watgrenzendelen.com/
Screening: 27.05.2022 18:15
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Discussion
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Family Song
Brazil, 2020, 75 min
Location: Brazil
A Film by: Paula Bessa Braz, Mihai Andrei Leaha
A family decides to open a classical music school in their own house. The young six Cruz brothers start to teach various musical instruments to the children in their neighborhood. Gradually, the house becomes a musical meeting place in one of Fortaleza’s most dangerous neighborhoods. But in order to live their dream of becoming professional musicians the family has to seek new horizons. How far will music take them?
Website: https://linktr.ee/cantodefamilia
Trailer of Film: https://vimeo.com/546900700
Screening: 27.05.2022 20:00
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The Mountains Sing
China, 2021, 40 min
Location: China
A Film by: Xiao Yang
In an attempt to trace the disappearing folk song fair, the camera travels along the antiphonal singing of Zhuang people across the mountains and cities in China, and encounters a fascinating diversity of singers and gatherings. Piecing together a broken folk song through the found fragments, the repetitively chanted folk songs, full of cultural tenacity, will guide the audience to travel across the gap resulting from difference. Set between reality and fictionality, the filmmaker searches for the possibility of a poetic life in the space between cultural memories and subjective feelings.
Website: https://www.midnightblurfilms.com/the-mountains-sing
Screening: 27.05.2022 21:15
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Avatara
Israel, 2020, 25 min
Location: India
A Film by: Nadav Harel
Set in the cultural frontier zone of the Hindu Himalaya, “Avatara” (from Sanskrit, ‘descent’) explores the lived religion of goddess worship (shaktism) in a remote pastoral valley. For her farmer and herder followers, the goddess's presence is all too real; quick to anger and ever-thirsty for sacrifices, she haunts them in their dreams and rituals, demanding complete submission as both child-like-friend and motherly-punisher. In this enchanted world of magical creativity, the encounters with the goddess are transient, intuitive events that hold the key to creation and, for those lucky enough to see her, a short lived salvation.
Website: https://www.noprocess.com/avatara
Trailer of Film: https://vimeo.com/364185072
Screening: 27.05.2022 21:55
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Discussion
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The Body Won't Close
Netherlands, 2020, 75 min
Location: Brazil
A Film by: Mattijs van de Port
Legend has it that the capoeira player Besouro Mangangá summoned Bahia’s magical power to seal his body from harm. Neither bullets nor knives could pierce his skin. But his enemies knew that the act of love could remove this magical protection and so they sent him a beautiful woman. Even today, young men in Santo Amaro tell each other the story. “The Body Won’t Close” is an intimate, sensory journey into the worlds of young men at the margins of Brazilian society. Driven by a queer sensibility, it poetically explores the dilemma of the human body as a porous structure and the impossibility of closing oneself off from the world, and from love.
Trailer of Film: https://vimeo.com/497564083
Screening: 27.05.2022 22:55
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Discussion
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