LEVIATHAN

France, Great Britain, USA 2012.
87 minutes
directed by: Véréna Paravel i Lucien Castaing-Taylor

The first great cinematic hit of a new visual era which is taking over the world. Something you have not seen before! A visual treatment that fully meets the great expectations of a cinematic vision born in the 20th century – a camera freed from the dictates of narration, a new all-seeing eye capable of creating a whole new world from the fragments of the old! “Leviathan” is the film which harkens the new possibilities of the visual in cinema.

The film takes us to the coast of New Bradford in North America, the former world capital of whaling, which served as the inspiration for Melville’s legendary novel “Moby Dick”. Today it remains one of the largest fishing harbours, from which over 500 ships sail each month. Filmmakers Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor follow one of these fishing vessels, sailing out into the murky, black waters on a trawling expedition.

And so begins a “gothic horror documentary! A world we have never seen before! The most spectacular film of the year!” Such praise is heaped on by film critics fascinated by the artistic achievement of two noted visual artists.

Without a single spoken world, the film creates a Biblical sea beast, the Leviathan, embodied in a gigantic metal monster that thunders by, devouring fish while beseiged by flocks of seagulls. Time and space become foreign to us. An awesome and frightening document of a parallel dark side and at the same time an inner image of our world that is devouring both itself and the planet.

Selector's Word: ”It is not about fishing, and yet it is; it is not about fishermen, and yet it is; it is a magic, philosophically thought provoking essay about ”la condition humaine”.

arretetoncinema.org/leviathan

Véréna Paravel

Born in Switzerland in 1971. PhD in anthropology and communication scences on Toulouse University. Postodctoral fellowship at Columbia Univerity, New York. Lecturer on Harvard University and works at Harvard’s “Sensory Ethnography Lab”. Her film and video works have been screened at Berlin, Locarno, New York, Toronto and other film festivals.

Selected filmography

FOREIGN PARTS, 2010

Lucien Castaing-Taylor

Born in Liverpool, Great Britain in 1966. He is antropologist and visual artist who works in film, video, and photography. His work is in the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art and the British Museum and his films have been screened at the most important festivals. He is professor of Visual Arts and Anthropology on Harvard, direktor of Sensory Ethnography Lab” and co-director of Film Study Center. He founded journal “Visual Anthropology Review”.

Selected filmography

SWEETGRASS, 2009

Selected collective filmography

LEVIATHAN, 2012

A WORLD NOT OURS

Great Britain, Denmark, Lebanon 2012
93 minutes
directed by: Mahdi Fleifel

From the moment of it’s appearance, this film and it’s young author received great accolades: a world premiere at the Berlinale, top prizes at leading cinema festivals including Edinburgh, Yamagata and New York and two awards for the leading young talent at Copenhagen Docs and the Nordisk Panorama within the section of “New Nordic Voices”.

Mahdi Fleifel brilliantly interweaves archival images with subjectively filmed material, creating a unique chronicle that manages to highlight the warmth of it’s main protagonists and the liveliness of daily events. Diverse video recordings of events, small and big, over a period of over 20 years are basis for a complexly composed film. This chronicle is an exlusive entry into a space which foreigners are strictly barred from, and so represents a valuable window into previously unseen life inside of the the largest Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.

Enchantingly humorous, full of life and indeliblly captured moments, this documentary carries a unique atmosphere and a delicate narrative line, revealing in a surprising light the space and people whose life is stamped with collective tragedy and trauma. In the collision of entertaining and melancholy, the surreal and the absurd, “A World Not Ours” is a testimony to a forgotten dark corner of the world, but also a vindication of life and joy.

A documentary of masterful narration, deeply honest, marked by the personal engagement of it’s maker and a rare artistic achievement – the breaking down of a wall of prejudice and ideologically colored stories about the fate of a people.

Selector's Word: ”One more film from a refugee camp, yes, but with a very personal and warm and humourous informative and emotional approach. About people like you and me.”

nakbafilmworks.gb.net
facebook.com/aworldnotoursmovie

Mahdi Fleifel

Palestinian filmmaker and visual artist based in London. Born in Dubai in 1979, he was raised in Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and later in the suburbs of Elsinore in Denmark. In 2009, Fleifel graduated from the National Film and Television School in London. His first-year film, “Arafat & I” was screened at more the a hundred festivals around the world and won numerous awards, as well his other short student films. In 2010 Fleifel teamed up with Irish producer Patrick Campbell. Together they set up the London based production company Nakba Filmworks.

Selected filmography

A WORLD NOT OURS, 2012

MY FATHERS, MY MOTHER AND ME
MEINE KEINE FAMILIE

Austria 2012
93 minutes
directed by: Pol-Julien Robert

Deep inside this film lies hidden a drama which slowly and imperceptibly unfolds enveloping the actors of this family and non-family story. The filmmaker Paul-Julien Robert launches a personal investigation into the identity of his father, but also into his own childhood. A childhood that is far from ordinary – for he was born and raised in a commune, which from the beginning of the 1970s to the late 80s came to be the largest free commune in Europe. It was created by the legendary avantgarde Austrian artist Otto Muehl, and at it’s height it was inhabited with more than 600 people from all over Europe. All of them were drawn there by the ideals of absolute freedom, to live a life based on the principles of “self-expression, communal property, free sexuality, joint labour, collective upbringing of children and direct democracy.”

Within this utopia, among large groups of carefree and joyful children we discover Paul-Julien Robert, thanks to archival footage for which he obtained exclusive permission to show publicly for the first time. This enables him to face a part of his forgotten and repressed childbood memories. The basis of the film is a pain-staking questioning of memory, an analysis of archival images and a dramatic confrontation of the filmmaker first with his own mother, and then a succession of ‘fathers’ and playmates from one of the ‘freest’ kindergardens in Europe.

This film represents an exclusive, shocking and disturbing creation of two dedicated masters of the cinematic art: Paul-Julien Robert, an engaged, courageous, analytical and emotional author and his editor Oliver Neumann, who builds the dramaturgy of this investigation constructing it into a tense drama of extraordinary gradation and rhythm. The two come together to create a film of superior achievement, which, last year in London, won them one of the most prestigous awards in the world of documentary cinema, one that carries the name of the legendary John Grierson.

Selector's Word: ”OMG, I am old enough to remember those days of communes and power structures, and here is a personal, warm and critical comment from one of ”the victims”...”

meinekeinefamilie.at

Paul-Julien Robert

Austrian filmmaker and photographer, born 1979 in Paris, grew up in Austria and Switzerland. He spent the first 12 years of his life in Friedrichshof commune near Vienna, the largest commune in Europe founded by the Viennese Actionist Otto Muehl at the beginning of the 1970's. Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, department of conceptual art and at the Berlin University of Arts. The author of several photo exibitions and short films.

Selected filmography

MY FATHERS, MY MOTHER AND ME (Meine Keine Familie), 2012

LA MAISON DE LA RADIO

France, Japan 2012
103 minutes
directed by: Nicolas Philibert

The great French documentary master Nicolas Philibert takes us into the mysterious world behind the voices and music coming to us through the subtle sphere of sound waves. This is a journey into the heart of the most famous French radio house to discover the secret of a media whose essence is invisible. In the vein of some of his greatest works, this film has a simple narrative frame – this is a saga about a day in the life of radio. A day constructed as an exciting mosaic of scenes from studios, editors’ offices, technical checks, recording sessions, dynamic and passionate speeches, discussions, singing and performance, laughter. Philibert’s assured camera becomes a careful and patient observer documenting the world of radio secrets in mesmerising frames colored by beauty, warmth and an ever-present curiousity.

The titular “La Maison de la radio” is the name by which the French refer to the rotund building in Paris housing the national radio station – Radio France. With the skill of a great filmmaker, Philibert leads us into one of the powerful media fortresses of present-day Europe to reveal to us the ideas, skills, talents, beauty, humor and irony hidden in the labyrinth of hallways, studios and offices.

An extraordinary achievement of contemporary documentary about a medium pushed aside in today’s inflation of images and the visual, but which is staging a comeback everywhere. Like a water-lilly, blossoming under the magic touch of Philibert, the ever-present yet invisible sphere reveals to us it’s face in a spell-binding and unforgettable moment, captivating the viewer.

Selector's Word: ”This is about real radio as an art form, the beauty of words treated with respect and dignity, far away from the usual banal media noise.”

filmsdulosange.fr/en/film/13/la-maison-de-la-radio

Nicolas Philibert

Born 1951 in Nancy, and grew up in the Alpine village of Grenoble. France. His father was a professor of philosophy, but also a big cinema-enthusiast. Thanks to that Nicolas Philibert has been developing his interest for film since his childhood. After studying philosophy he started working as an assistant director for fiction feature films directed by important French directors. He started directing documentaries in 1978. From 1985 to 1988 shot various mountaineering and sports adventure films for television. Since 1990 he has directed eight exceptionally successful feature documentaries and all of them obtained a theatrical release. After winning Prix Luis Delluc at Cannes Film Festival in 2002, his masterpiece “To Be and to Have” (“Etre et avoir”) had a huge success in more then forty countries all over the world.

Selected filmography

HIS MASTER'S VOICE (La voix de son maître), 1978
GO FOR IT, LAPERBIE! (Vas-y Lapébie!), 1988
LOUVRE CITY (La ville Louvre), 1990
IN THE LAND OF THE DEAF (Le pays des sourds), 1992
ANIMALS (Un animal, des animaux), 1996
EVERY LITTLE THING (La moindre des choses), 1997
WHO KNOWS? (Qui sait?), 1998
TO BE AND TO HAVE (Etre et avoir), 2002
BACK TO NORMANDY (Retour en Normandie), 2007
NENETTE (Nénette), 2009
LA MAISON DE LA RADIO, 2012

EVERYDAY REBELLION

Austria, Switzerland 2013
110 minutes
directed by: The Riahi Brothers

The world is in a state of rebeliion against political regimes, against as yet unbridled madness, against itself! In this contemporary, all-encompassing and ever-present ”Everyday Rebellion”, the rebels have uncovered new weapons that make them more active, more efficient, and more – entertaining! From subversive illegal cultural actions in Iran to silent demonstrations in Egypt, through bare-breasted provocations by activists in the Ukraine to the Occupy movement in the US, this film follows pioneers of new forms of protests, from the stages of preparation to their dramatic public staging.

The Riahi brothers manage to skillfully and thoughtfully encompass the entire world in a single gaze and single breath. In a series of dynamic episodes framed by a pointed and witty commentry, this lavish study of a planetary phenomenon pulses in a rhythmic succession of drama, carneval and floating conflicts. This is a story of the power of ideas and the spirit, of a modern-day David who unfailingly takes aim at an unfathomably giant Goliath, hitting his mark with a stone no larger than a grain of wisdom. And here is another reason for us to be particularly interested in seeing this film – one of the protagonists is a Belgrade activist who speaks to events that took place here, setting a precedent for events shaking up the world today.

This film is a festival favorite around the world, particularly of audiences that see in it a magic mirror in which everyone’s face and position is reflected with clarity. One of the largest productions in recent years, a film of undisputable aesthetic value, “Everyday Rebeliion” transcends it’s cinematic form, having become an active internet platform in which all anonymous and “little” people are invited to join in.

Selector's Word: ”You think you have seen it before, but here it is put in an intelligent context and embodied in flesh and blood.”

everydayrebellion.com/the-project

Arash T. Riahi

Born 1972 in Iran. Since 1982 he lives in Vienna, Austria. Studied Film and the Arts. Has been working for the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, ORF, since 1995 as writer and director for the youth and art departments. Founded the film and media production company "Golden Girls Filmproduction" in 1998. Has written, directed and edited several award-winning short and experimental films, music videos and commercials. His feature documentaries have been awarded with more than 50 international awards, and his feature film "For a Moment, Freedom" was the Austrian candidate for the Academy Awards 2010.

Selected filmography

LET THE WORLD END (Eclipsa-n-am ce face), 1999
THE SOUVENIRS OF MR. X, 2004
EXILE FAMILY MOVIE, 1994 – 2006
EVERYTHING WILL NOT BE FINE, 2012
EVERYDAY REBELLION, 2013

Arman T. Riahi

Arman was born in Iran and grew up in Austria. He studied media technologies and worked as a screen and graphic designer in London and Vienna. Director of TV-shows for the ORF. His short film “Elektrotrash” won the nation wide short film award. Took part at the Berlinale Talent Campus as director/screenwriter. “Schwarzkopf” is his first cinema documentary.

Selected filmography

SCHWARZKOPF, 2011.
EVERYDAY REBELLION, 2013

MY STUFF
TAVARATAIVAS

Finland 2013
80 minutes
directed by: Petri Luukkainen

What do we really need in life?

How much do the things we are surrounded by fulfill us, and how much do they enslave us?

In a moment of emotional crisis, a young Finn decides to draw on the wisdom of philosophers of antiquity, making a radical move in his life. Discarding everything around and even on him, in a brave and uncompromising step he put himself in an entirely new existential situation, one that sets him at a considerable, and sobering, distance from the modern world.

Petri Luukkainen signs and stars in this daring and unusual manifesto. Following a set of simple and strict rules the filmmaker documents his own experiment, examining modern culture and the perpetual dynamic of need-creation in a world swamped with consumerism. Are we still capable of understanding ourselves and recognising the true needs of our own beings, emotions and thoughts? This is a provocative adventure of the soul and body from the moment of stripping down to one’s freedom, in a metaphoric re-birth, to a world shaped and transformed by our own actions.

In equal measure intelligent, entertaining and moving, this film is a surprising study of universal and immutable values. Virtuoso photography, a masterfully playful and dynamic montage, and a strikingly effective narration rank “My Stuff” at the very top of contemporary documentary cinema.

Selector's Word: ”It is such an obvious question to our materialistic world: How much do we actually need in our daily life... and it is done in a clever and very funny way!”

mystuffmovie.com

Petri Luukkainen

Born in 1984, lives and works in Helsinki. He started his career at the age of 17 by directing TV commercials and music videos. Since then he has worked as a director, director of photography and editor on documentary series for Finnish broadcasting company YLE.

Selected filmography

MY STUFF (Tavarataivas), 2013

FAITH CONNECTIONS

France, India 2013
115 minutes
directed by: Pan Nalin

A grand cinematic spectacle! A documentary that takes us into the world of religious cults of India – the place where the rivers Ganges and Yamuna join with the invisible river Saraswati. Here every twelve years the world’s largest faith gathering – Kumbh Mela, takes place.

Tens of millions of people from all part of India come together over fifty-five days to bathe in the holy river and wash off their sins, thus ending the karmic wheel of reincarnation. Director Pan Nalin captures this massive human anthill in fascinating scenes conveying the eruption of colors and events, representing the vast space and the heaving human mass. Building on the frenetic activity, the filmmaker’s precise direction delineates the various groups of different sects, and among them the Sadhu – holy men. In contrast to their deep inner peace are the swarming thousands of ordinary people, confused and anxious, whom the power of faith has brought to this place where the earthly and heavenly meet.

In a moment of emotional crisis, a young Finn decides to draw on the wisdom of philosophers of antiquity, making a radical move in his life. Discarding everything around and even on him, in a brave and uncompromising step he put himself in an entirely new existential situation, one that sets him at a considerable, and sobering, distance from the modern world.

During Kumbh Mela several thousand people get lost, and the filmmaker chooses to frame the film around lost children, three boys thrown into the crowd of people and abandoned to the twists of fate. Led by the notion that “faith is not faith until it is all that you have left to hold on to” Pan Nalin develops a majestic composition in search for the deep and powerful connections being woven around the boys and all they come in contact with.

“Faith Connections” are another triumph of the heights of documentary cinema. Pan Nalin, an international star of the cinematic skies, both in fiction and documentary, chooses one of the most important of subjects in India – man facing destiny, and gives it a European documentary treatment, to create an exciting, lavish fresco pulsing with frenetic inner rhythms.

Selector's Word: ”Khumbh Mela... many films have been made about this extraordinary religious gathering but never have I seen so many stories been integrated in such a beautiful compassionate way”.

faithconnections.in

Pan Nalin

Born as Nalin Kumar Pandya, in a small town in Gujarat, India. Studied fine arts at the University of Baroda and went on to learn design at the National Institute of Design. He made animation films and short silent films. In Mumbai he directs commercials and corporate films first. Experimented with the short fiction film forms and made documentaries for BBC, Discovery, Canal Plus and other international networks. His first feature documentary “Ayurveda: Art Of Being” was theatrically released worldwide with major success. His first feature film “Samsara” from 2001 was a success worldwide, as well as the next one “Valley of Flowers”.He is one of 30 popular filmmakers from all over the world invited to take part in the project “Visual Telegrams” for the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009. He lives in India and France.

Selected filmography

AYURVEDA: ART OF BBEING, 2001
FAITH CONNECTIONS, 2013