28th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival

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Docu Talents from the East 2014

Docu Talents from the East 2014 introduced the most remarkable creative documentary projects from Central and Eastern Europe in the stage of production or post-production.

Docu Talents from the East 2014

Projects presented at Docu Talents from the East 2014

SIPELGAPESA / ANTHILL

Director: Vladimir Loginov
Country: Estonia
Producer: Elina Litvinova
Director of photography: Max Golomidov
Film length: 90 min
Stage of development: post-production
Estimated date of premiere: October 2014

Synopsis
Anthill is a portrait of a giant garage complex located in the largest housing estate in Tallinn. 700 garage box owners form an extraordinary men’s club, and vary from those who use the garages to maintain their cars and those who adapt their boxes for living. The complex is even more unique owing to the existence of private saunas, a restaurant, an animal clinic and other artefacts of life stuck in time 20 years ago.

Producer
Allfilm — Elina Litvinova

DANIELŮV SVĚT / DANIEL'S WORLD

Director: Veronika Lišková
Country: Czech Republic
Producers: Zdeněk Holý, Jana Bebrová
Director of photography: Braňo Pažitka
Film length: 75 min
Stage of development: post-production
Estimated date of premiere: October 2014

Synopsis
Daniel is a young man. Daniel is a student and a writer. Daniel is also a pedophile. He is in love and keeps no secret about his sexual orientation; not even from the parents of his beloved boy. Daniel has never hurt any child. Neither have Jirka Fx100d, Tomáš Efix, Petr Kasz, MR_Xguard, Host, Simigran, Silesia, Elrond or others from the community of Czech pedophiles. What is the way of the most intimate of feelings in Daniel’s and his friends’ heart? The film introduces the rises and falls of people living with pedophilia. It portrays Daniel and the community of Czech pedophiles.

Producer
Vernes s.r.o. — Zdeněk Holý, Jana Bebrová

DALEKO ZA SLUNCEM / FAR BEYOND THE SUN

Director: Olga Špátová
Country: Czech Republic
Producers: Tereza Polachová, Hana Kastelicová
Director of photography: Olga Špátová
Film length: 70 min
Stage of development: post-production
Estimated date of premiere: November 2014

Synopsis
The story of a medic, Aleš Bárta, who ten years ago decided to dedicate himself to building a small rural hospital in western Kenya. Working together with a group of friends from the Czech Republic, both doctors and medics, he encounters feelings of hopelessness but also great happiness.

Producer
HBO Europe — Tereza Polachová, Hana Kastelicová

GADŽO / GADJO

Director: Tomáš Kratochvíl
Country: Czech Republic
Producer: Filip Remunda, Vít Klusák
Director of photography: Tomáš Kratochvíl
Film length: 70/90 min
Stage of development: post-production
Estimated date of premiere: February 2015

Synopsis
After being left by his wife, the author decides to move from the centre of Prague to supposedly the worst Gypsy ghetto in the Czech Republic. He is taken under the wing of an infamous clan of former mobsters. Gadjo is involved in the repair of a badly damaged house and becomes a member of the family. His aim is to find the cause of the decline of the place where he lives. He takes part in anti-Roma marches and tries to uncover the motivations of all the groups involved. Half a year after his arrival in the ghetto, his white family, together with the gypsies, celebrates Gadjo’s thirtieth birthday.

Producer
Hypermarket Film — Filip Remunda, Vít Klusák

V PAPRSCÍCH SLUNCE / IN THE RAYS OF SUN

Director: Vitaly Mansky
Country: Czech Republic, Russia, Germany
Producers: Filip Remunda, Vít Klusák, Natalya Manskya, Simone Baumann
Director of photography: Alexandra Ivanova
Film length: 60/90 min
Stage of development: production
Estimated date of premiere: June 2015

Synopsis
Based on unprecedented access, this film shows life in North Korea more extensively than ever before. Director Vitaly Mansky received a comprehensive official permission for this first Russian-North Korean documentary collaboration in history. The film is dedicated to documenting as much of everyday, ordinary North Korean life as possible, both in the capital and the countryside. The film follows a family in Pyongyang over the course of one year, seen from the perspective of 8-year-old Zin Mi, the only daughter of an obedient North Korean couple.

Producer
Hypermarket Film — Filip Remunda, Vít Klusák, Vertov studio — Natalya Manskya, Saxonia Entertainment GmbH — Simone Baumann

KOUDELKA: SHOOTING HOLY LAND

Director: Gilad Baram
Country: Israel, France, Czech Republic
Producers: Yulie Cohen, Radim Procházka, Paul Saadoun, Karen Michael (Arte France), Ivana Pauerová (Czech TV)
Director of photography: Gilad Baram
Film length: 52/75 min
Stage of development: end of filming
Estimated date of premiere: July 2015

Synopsis
Forty years after photographing the iconic images of the Russian invasion of Prague, the seventy-five year old Czech photographer, Josef Koudelka, arrives in the Holy Land for the first time in his life. It is 2008 and the acclaimed master embarks once more on a photographic project involving a conflict zone, this time in Israel and Palestine. Filmed over five years by his assistant, Koudelka: Shooting Holy Land is an intimate record of Koudelka’s unique creative process, as never seen before.

Producer
YC Production — Yulie Cohen, Produkce Radim Procházka — Radim Procházka, Second Vague — Paul Saadoun

LOVE EXPRESS. NIEZWYKŁY PRZYPADEK WALERIANA BOROWCZYKA / LOVE EXPRESS. THE STRANGE CASE OF WALERIAN BOROWCZYK

Director: Kuba Mikurda
Country: Poland
Producers: Danuta Gęgotek, Katarzyna Siniarska
Director of photography: Bartosz Nalazek
Film length: 52/80 min
Stage of development: development
Estimated date of premiere: July 2015

Synopsis
Love Express is an original insight into the twist and turns of the sexual revolution and its aftermath. An account of a tumultuous relationship between high art, porn and the market, as illustrated by the puzzling career of the cineaste maudit, Walerian Borowczyk — celebrated by film critics and festivals in the 1970s and swallowed by the soft porn circuit in the 1980s. From Cannes to cult, from arthouse to sexploitation, from acclaim to oblivion — Borowczyk’s career reads as a black comedy about a dreamer on a crash-course with the critics, censorship, market and emerging “society of enjoyment”.

Producer
Colab Pictures — Danuta Gęgotek, Katarzyna Siniarska

JÁMA / MY FARM IS MY CASTLE

Director: Jiří Stejskal
Country: Czech Republic
Producers: Pavla Kubečková, Tomáš Hrubý
Director of photography: Jiří Stejskal
Film length: 87 min
Stage of development: post-production
Estimated date of premiere: August 2014

Synopsis
Natasha Yurchenko used to live in a small village before developers decided to rebuild the area. Her family resisted the development and they are now trapped between high-rise buildings. She wants to fight for her home but conflicts surface in the family. How far will she go defending their home? A film portrait of 5 years in the life of one (extra)ordinary family in the current Ukraine.

Producer
nutprodukce — Pavla Kubečková, Tomáš Hrubý

OKHWAN. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

Director: Marek Mackovič
Country: Slovakia, UK
Producers: Tomáš Kaminský, Marek Mackovič, Rebekah Tolley
Director of photography: Martin Štrba
Film length: 85 min
Stage of development: post-production
Estimated date of premiere: January 2015

Synopsis
This feature length documentary is currently in post-production and it is based on the story of Okhwan Yoon, the South Korean star of Kevin Macdonald’s Life in a Day. Okhwan is a former businessman from Seoul who gave up his professional career to embark on a ten-year long cycling trip through 192 countries. Okhwan’s journey is a story of fighting for freedom. Along the way he realized that real happiness comes from dedicating oneself to others. While thinking about the divided families and friends between North and South Korea he could no longer suppress his burning desire — to see the Koreas reunited in his lifetime.

Producer
Mandala Pictures — Tomáš Kaminský, Filmpark production — Marek Mackovič, Peter Neveďal, TarianFilms — Rebekah Tolley, RTVS — Slovak Public TV

OUR ATLANTIS

Director: Arthur Sukiasyan
Country: Armenia, France, Turkey
Producers: Jean-Pierre Lagrange, Arthur Sukiasyan
Director of photography: Tammam Hamza
Film length: 83 min
Stage of development: post-production
Estimated date of premiere: October 2014

Synopsis
Our Atlantis is a documentary about an Armenian camp in Istanbul (Turkey), which was built by orphans in 1960s and later on taken away by Turkish authorities. This is a journey between the past and present of the camp showing how 30 years later children of this camp try not to lose their camp memories. And through this reconstruction, Our Atlantis tells the dramatic story of Karo and Flor who were together in this camp, not knowing that they were siblings, which they discovered by chance only 15 years later.

Producer
JPL Productions — Jean-Pierre Lagrange, Arthur Sukiasyan

REPORTER

Directors: Magdalena Szymków
Country: Poland, UK
Producers: Anna Wydra, Francesco Ragazzi
Director of photography: Paweł Chorzępa
Film length: 52/75 min
Stage of development: production
Estimated date of premiere: July 2015

Synopsis
A found-footage portrait of a writer and reporter. It explores the life of Ryszard Kapuściński, an icon of journalism and non-fiction literature. It is a cinematic collage of images — home movies, as well as 16 mm and VHS — covering his journalistic assignments all over the world. Archival materials permit to immerse into the atmosphere and context of each époque. His audio notes let us comprehend the background of his work, and the factors of choices and understandings of the Polish reporter. Let the film become a visual essay on the writer’s creative process, his failures, struggles and accomplishments.

Producer
Vezfilm — Francesco Ragazzi, Otter Films — Anna Wydra

THE SERBIAN LAWYER

Directors: Aleksandar Nikolic
Country: Germany, UK
Producer: Gregor Streiber
Director of photography: Aleksandar Nikolic
Film length: 83 min
Stage of development: post-production
Estimated date of premiere: October 2014

Synopsis
Ten years after fleeing the regime in Serbia, Marko finds himself defending some of the very people that he fought against while he lived there, including the notorious Radovan Karadzic.

Producer
Inselfilm Produktion — Gregor Streiber

 

HISTORY

Ministerstvo kultury
Fond kinematografie
Creative Europe Media
Město Jihlava
Kraj Vysočina
GEMO
Česká televize
Český rozhlas
Aktuálně.cz
Respekt
Dafilms