24th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival
I Have Sinned a Rapturous Sin
director: Maryam Tafakory
original title: Gonah kardam gonahi por ze lezzat
country: Iran, United Kingdom
year: 2018
running time: 8 min.
synopsis
An essay filmed against the backdrop of lyrical images of feather plucking or drawing with chalk presents the clerical orders of Islamic women and how they rein in their impure desires. As a subversive element of Islamic fundamentalism, the director recites a poem by Iranian feminist writer Forough Farrokhzad.
biography
Iranian director Maryam Tafakory (1987) works in London and addresses topics relating to female identity in a religious and political context. She experiments with the possibilities of visual narration and oscillations between reality and fiction.
more about film
| director: | Maryam Tafakory |
| producer: | Maryam Tafakory |
| editing: | Maryam Tafakory |
other films in the section
Three micro-stories from contemporary Libya – specifically the town of Benghazi, stigmatised by the terrorist attack on the American consulate and the death of the American ambassador – present the city during a time of change and offer a look at the life of a used-car salesman, a fisherman on the sea, and a young doctor as she learns to drive a car.
Seen from the air, the cars covered in a fine layer of dust and sand look like toy cars lined up on a shelf. In the words of the jovial salesman, "you can still smell the factory."
Benghazi Stories
Omar Bushiha, Farag Akwedir, Ibrahim Algouri
United Kingdom, Libya / 2012 / 12 min.
section: Short Joy
Central European Premiere
A grassy area fills with arriving cars. The passengers are given bread and wine and a programme for the religious service. All they have to do is tune in their radio to the right station, and the Sunday service begins. In Daytona Beach, Florida, the concept of drive-in theatres has been adapted for an unusual purpose. DeFilippo’s observational documentary takes a look at this modern church.
Clean Hands
Lauren DeFilippo
United States / 2016 / 9 min.
section: Short Joy
East European Premiere
An immobile camera monitors a path winding through the fields. The movements of the crowd are a harbinger of the interruption of the static image. The procession of refugees, under the watchful eye of military forces, winds in an orderly fashion through the Slovenian countryside. They march on, uninterested in the camera’s eye or in the revelation of their existence.
Borders
Damjan Kozole
Slovenia / 2016 / 10 min.
section: Short Joy
Czech Premiere
Nomads in the seas of Indonesia say that when a women gives birth to a child, she also gives birth to its twin in the form of an octopus. A look at a cultural environment shaped by traditional folk beliefs. The camera follows a man swimming with his face submerged in the sea in a ritual honouring the octopus. Dishonouring your aquatic brother can lead to misfortune.
Oh Brother Octopus
Florian Kunert
Germany / 2017 / 27 min.
section: Short Joy
East European Premiere
Tabatô – the site of this black-and-white-and-red docudrama – is a small community in the Republic of Guinea-Bissau on the west coast of Africa. What makes this place remarkable is that all the local inhabitants are musicians. Into this small oasis in a world of instability is brought the idea of shooting and the trauma of war. The unpacked mystery of a closed suitcase.From the arrivals hall, a well-dressed native with a turban on his head emerges. The wheels of his suitcase roll across the hardened clay of the open plain. He is alone. A shot rings out... he hits the ground.
Tabatô
João Viana
Portugal / 2013 / 13 min.
section: Short Joy
Czech Premiere
There’s a helpline just for gay farmers. Through authentic recordings and reconstructed situations, the film offers a glimpse into the issue of British gay men from rural areas. For farmers it’s difficult enough to admit their orientation to themselves, let alone to their not-so-gay-friendly surroundings.
Landline
Matt Houghton
United Kingdom / 2017 / 12 min.
section: Short Joy
East European Premiere
This experimental film shows natural phenomena in their raw form. Views of the sea are a multifaceted metaphor for birth, loss, madness, and death. Archetypal sequences accompanied by a cacophony of sound blend with the filmmaker’s intimate shots. The mysteries of life are presented in nineteen minutes.
Idle by the Sea
Kinda Hassan
Lebanon, Egypt / 2017 / 19 min.
section: Short Joy
East European Premiere
After a dam flooded a village in northern Iran, one island remained. There’s a grave on it. On a hill above the new lake, an old woman looks out at it. An intimate look at the daily routine of an Iranian woman who has survived modestly for twelve years alone in a house at the base of the mountain. She waits for permission to visit the island.
Lotus
Mohammadreza Vatandoust
Iran / 2018 / 13 min.
section: Short Joy
European Premiere
We enter a dilapidated boarding school through an open, broken window. Blotches on the pure snowy landscape. Visually refined footage of decay is accompanied by the reminiscences of the now-adult children who came here as seven-year-olds. Some of them would prefer to forget what others see as the best years of their lives.
Children who cannot be seen. The giggling of children’s voices carries through the run-down rooms. A boy and a girl. They exchange new words. Someone is coming, but does not enter. The door opens on its own. Behind the building shimmer the Northern Lights.
Cod Liver Oil and Cream Caramels
Guro Saniola Bjerk
Norway / 2013 / 8 min.
section: Short Joy
Swifts spend their entire lives in the air. They sleepwhile flying and are among the fastest birds in the world. The camera captures what their great speed makes impossible to see with the naked eye – the space-time of the swift’s flight in the form of stages of flight, trajectories and curves. Every summer, the birds perform their aerial acrobatics in the sky over the housing estate they call home, as they prepare for the long fl ight south.
The swift as an example of joy, in the air as an example ofhome.
Swifts
Andran Abramjan
Czech Republic / 2013 / 3 min.
section: Short Joy
World Premiere
The documentary as a computer game – not suitable for epileptics – in a technologically remarkable abstract experimental essay. An at times madcap confession, set to the rhythm of electronic music videos, of the filmmaker's loving relationship to outdated hardware and software that speaks in the language of computers, cyborgs and dark humour."Computer games built a castle full of fantastical worlds in my mind. These have become a part of my memory. My mind makes no difference between memories of dreams and memories of computers. It makes no difference between reality and imagination."
The Electronic Border
David Elsener
Switzerland / 2012 / 8 min.
section: Short Joy
East European Premiere
The director revises a TV report which a local TV station shot with him and his family on the Rosh hashanah holiday in 1974. In the footage which seemed as an expression of interest in the Jewish culture at the time it was created, the author discovers antisemitic and racist tendencies. The title refers to a zoo where domesticated and tame animals can be fed and petted by the visitors.
Petting Zoo
Daniel Robin
United States / 2019 / 11 min.
section: Short Joy
World Premiere
