NÖMADAK TX

Spain, 2006
91 minutes
directed by Raúl de la Fuente

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.

www.nomadaktx.com

SELECTOR‘S WORD: “At the first glance you might think that this is just another politically correct film – and then you discover that these young, charming music talented guys are able to establish more than just a superficial contact with people from al over th world. It's music, it's culture clash and diversity, it's a dream of a better world that is conveyed to us.”

Raúl de la Fuente

Born in 1974 in Pamplona, Spain. A graduate in Information Science from the University of Navarra, he has done a great deal of work as a screenwriter, director of photography and director. His first jobs were with music: Compay Segundo, Vieja Trova Santiaguera, Rosana. José Mercé, Moraito and Dolores Agujeta – Cubans and gypsies have marked his career. The heart rules in the case of Cuban Son and Flamenco. If the most important thing is people, the appropriate audiovisual format for portraying them was the documentary. Raúl de la Fuente has made documentaries in India, Morocco, Algeria, Mongolia, Guatemala, Ethiopia, Venezuela, Peru, Cuba, Lapland, Andalusia, and the Basque Country. In love with Latin American music and culture, his documentary work is an attempt at lending support to the creation of a free, sovereign Latin America. He is currently working on a project involving a feature-length documentary in Cuba.

Selected filmography

WAIKING UP OF ADIVASI PEOPLE (El despertar del pueblo Adivasi), 2000
ALZHEIMER (Alzheimer), 2001
EYES THAT CAN SEE (Ojos que si ven), 2002
AHIMSA (Ahimsa), 2003
JANAVAK (Janavak), 2003
FIFTH DISTRICT (Distrito cinco), 2005
TO FLY (Volar), 2006
NÖMADAK TX, 2006

THE MOSQUITO PROBLEM & OTHER STORIES
ПРОБЛЕМЪТ С КОМАРИТЕ И ДРУГИ ИСТОРИИ

Bulgaria, 2007
100 minutes
directed by Andrey Paounov

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.

SELECTOR‘S WORD: "Have you ever heard of Belene, a town in Bulgaria? No, I suppose you haven’t. And you maybe never really wanted to./prethodni_festivali/pages/2008. Nevertheless, having seen this witty and at the same time mind-provoking film, you will say, yes I have met people from Belene, who are eccentric and charming and who share their thoughts on life in a town which suffers an almost year-round mosquito infestation. It’s not only a beauty in human approach, it is also innovative in a dramaturgical structure."

Andrey Paounov

Born in 1974 in Sofia, Bulgaria. He has been a bartender in Prague, a cook in Washington DC, a gardener in Toronto, a boom operator in New York, an accounting clerk in San Francisko. Graduated from the National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2000. His first documentary feature “Georgi and the Butterflies” was presented at more then 50 film festivals all over the world and won Silver Wolf at IDFA 2004, as well as 12 other international awards.

Selected Filmography

GEORGI AND THE BUTTERFLIES (Георги и пеперудите), 2004
MOSQUITO PROBLEMS AND OTHER STORIES (Проблемът с комарите и други истории), 2007

A FATHER'S MUSIC
NACH DER MUSIK

Germany, 2007
105 minutes
written and directed by Igor Heitzmann

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.

www.nachdermusik.de

SELECTOR'S WORD: "There is this moving family photo of a big man holding the hand of a boy walking away from the camera to somewhere. Father and son who were never really father and son, as the son lived with his mother in the West and the father lived with his wife in the East as renowned and tributed conductor of music. The film is a voyage back in time with father and son (and the two women). It's without pretentions, full of humour and the son's ambition to make the father conduct just one more time. Silent beauty, stylistically perfect film and wonderful music!"

Igor Heitzmann

Born in the New Yearcs Eve in 1971 in Rendsburg, in former Federal Republic of Germany. Raised and currently living in Berlin. Piano studies 1981 - 1991. A-Levels; "Film year" in Paris 1991-92. Theatre Studies, Freie Universitaet Berlin, 1992-93. During next two years he worked as an assistant director, script editor, production assistant, translator. Film studies at the German Film and Television Academy, Berlin (DFFB) from 1995 to 2006.

Selected filmography

A FATHER'S MUSIC (Nach Der Musik), 2007

WORLDSTAR

Germany, 2007
75 minutes
directed by Nataša von Kopp

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.

www.worldstar.sleeping-tiger.com

SELECTOR‘S WORD: “What a character! He is around 80 years old, and there he sits, Miroslav Tichý, a brilliant photographer, who does not want to take part in all the fuss around him being a génial artist. The gallery owners and the art critics come to his room, where he sits drinking his beer and slivovica, they ask him all kind of clever questions to his work. He doesn’t give a damn. The young female filmmakers, however, have succeeded to be there and to make him talk to them, and thus to us. Thanks to that, it’s great fun to be with him. This film is full of talent!”

Nataša von Kopp

Born in Baden-Baden, in Germany. Raised in Germany, Czechoslovakia and Japan. 2001 Magister Atrium in East Asian Art and Japanology at the University in Heidelberg. Since 2001 until 2006 student at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg.

Selected filmography

WORLDSTAR, 2006

SEPTEMBERS
SEPTIEMBRES

Spain, 2007
90 minutes
written and directed by Carles Bosch

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.

www.bausanfilms.com

SELECTOR‘S WORD: “If 9 out of 10 films deal with love, its one too little, said Francois Truffaut and right it is. This film about love behind the bars is built like a romantic drama, it has everything, tears for crying, tears for laughing, happy moments, sorrow. Some of the inmates leave the prison waiting for the one and only they met inside. And in between there are song contests with songs that are about… yes, Love. Carlos Bosch, nominated for an Oscar for his “Balseros”, knows how to build a story. It’s a film for all of us, with wonderful characters.”

Carles Bosch

His work as a veteran reporter for Spanish TV3, has taken him to the doorstep of major world events: the first Gulf War, the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the Zapatista Revolution. Bosch has also chased stories in Afghanistan, Iran, Chad, the Philippines, Mozambique, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Israel, among others. Recently he wrote the novel “Hay otras cosas” (“There are other things”). Carles Bosch directed the Oscar nominated “BALSEROS” (“Rafters”), which won a variety of international Awards for the Best Documentary, including an IDA (International Documentary Association). It was screened at a number of international film festivals, including Sundance and IDFA.

Selected filmography

RAFTERS (Balseros), 2002
SEPTEMBRI (Septiembres), 2007

THE BELL
VARPAS

Lithuania, 2007
56 minutes
written and directed by Audrius Stonys

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.

SELECTOR‘S WORD: “Audrius Stonys has always remained faithful to himself and to his unique conception of cinema and a poetical interpretation of the world. He has probably won all the prizes worth winning, including the European Oscar, the Felix, but it has not made him less uncompromising in his film language. Or maybe it is better to call it film paintings! Watch ”The Bell” that can be seen as the director’s hymn to legends and irrationality. Or to the beauty of human creativity.”

Audrius Stonys

Born on the 28th April 1966 in Lithuania. Member of European Film Academy and European Documentary Network. Made 13 films as an independent filmmaker and producer. Films got many international film awards. Among them Public prize in Nyon, Grand Prix in Split, prizes in Bornholm, Gyor, Neu Brandenburg, Oberhausen and San Francisco. 1992 the film “Earth of the Blind” received European Film Academy award “FELIX” as the Best European Documentary film of the Year. 2004-2005 Documentary teacher in European Film College, Denmark. 2006 lectures in Tokyo Waseda University. 2006 finished a new film “Uku ukai”. World premiere in International Film Festival Amsterdam IDFA 2006 “Uku ukai” received “Golden Mikeldi” in Bilbao International Film festival.

Selected filmography

EARTH OF THE BLIND (Neregių žemė), 1992
ANTIGRAVITATION (Antigravitacija), 2003
FLYING OVER BLUE FIELD (Skrajojimai mėlynam lauke), 1996
510 SECONDS OF SILENCE (Skrydis per Lietuvą arba 510 sekundžių tylos), 2000 (with Arunas Matelis)
UKU UKAI, 2006
THE BELL (Varpas), 2007

THE MONASTERY

Danmark, 2006
84 minutes
written and directed by Pernille Rose Grřnkjćr

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.

www.themonasterymovie.com

SELECTOR‘S WORD: “This film has received all the prizes it deserves because it has all the qualities you can ask for in a documentary. It is about a man and his dreams, that he wishes to fulfill at this point where he is close to the end. But it is also a film about love between a nun and the old man, and between the director - who is also the camerawoman of the film - and a unique character for a film. A man she has followed for seven years. You cry, you laugh, you sense drama and conflict. What an artistic achievement!”

Pernille Rose Grřnkjćr

Born in 1973 in Denmark. Graduated in documentary directing at National Film School of Denmark in 1997. She has worked on documentary films and series for television.

Selected filmography

REPEATING GRANDPA (Min morfar forfra), 2001
THE MONASTERY, 2006