city

A filmmaker and a young, left-wing activist named Pierre meet outside amidst the pandemonium of civil unrest. Every Saturday, they take to the streets of Paris in support of the yellow vests movement. Originally, when the yellow vest protests started in November 2018, it was about calling for affordable housing and cheaper fuel prices. Later the protests expanded to include demands for economic justice and the French president's resignation. The film consists of footage shot from the heart of the crowd and authentic interviews with opponents and supporters of the movement. The author's introspective voiceover thematizes the passion and romantic feelings brewing inside her despite the brutality and urgency of the demonstrations.“It’s the thread of loving passion and unreasonable bewitchment that the filmmaker has chosen to pull upon, as a mirror to the fiery, revolutionary hopes of a social movement gathering together individuals from very different horizons every week on the streets of Paris.” (Fabien Lemerciera)---Source: https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/423280/

A collection of silent shorts was designated for the US pavilion at the 1958 Brussels Worldʼs Fair. The film sequences were screened in the pavilion in a neverending loop. The story and characters were not important, what was of significance was showing moments from the everyday life of Americans. The film programme was to showcase the best of the US: modern metropolises, happy nuclear families, miracles of technology, full shelves in supermarkets. With a dynamic montage and distinct aesthetics the director managed to create a film collage that is reminiscent of the avant-garde experiments.“They were to be little bits of Americana. While I did the filming in and around NewYork City and the editing, Donn Pennebaker traveled around the United States collecting images that he sent back to me. We made about 30 loops. Penny made some, I made some, and Ricky Leacock and Wheaton Galentine each made one. I came up with a lot of rhythmic editing in order to get these three minute loops to work. I had to get a lot of information into 100 feet of film. Those loops were a big hit at the fair.” — Shirley Clarke

In the midst of a vast desert in the American West lie the abandoned ruins of a ghost town. A young person, Eileen, decided to leave the hectic hustle and bustle of modern life to live there and dedicate their life to hard work. During the day, they repair the crumbling houses in the town, at night they sleep in their trailer. They meet many locals and travelers with whom they share both their joys and doubts. The longitudinal documentary works as a double portrait: a portrait of a person defying society’s ideas and a portrait of a place living in the past, full of idiosyncratic figures and fascinating life stories.

The legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York City finds itself at a critical moment in its existence. Eight years of reconstruction means hope for the owners that it will be reopened in its full glory and beauty. But for the more than 50 regular tenants, the already difficult living conditions in the middle of a construction site can result in an even more difficult existential situation. It is this unique turning point that is the subject of the documentary, which uses profiles of residents of different ages and interests to piece together a historical picture of the iconic building. A hotel that in the pop culture imagination – but apparently also in reality – has become more than just a mere place of habitation.“Our intention was to keep a distance from the mythology and deconstruct it. We wanted to welcome the audience through the backdoor of the Chelsea Hotel and to show something different from what people usually imagine.”---Source: https://www.cineuropa.org/en/interview/422124/

Even before the pandemic, there were almost 24,000 homeless people in the Czech Republic. In the following months, many more Czechs faced housing crisis due to the increase in the unemployment rate. Filip, a social work student from Prague experiences their reality first hand. The protagonist of a video journal was shooting in the streets of Ústí nad Labem. In the hot summer days, his existence shrank to finding a mere place to sleep and a meal to eat. Growing tiredness and apathy are temporarily brightened by joyful moments of human solidarity and warm meals. In such circumstances, things like that are not at all common; they represent a means of survival.“An autobiographical video journal of a social worker who decided to spend a week in the street of an unknown city. Is home a place inside or outside?”---Source: by author

Like at the New Year’s Eve, showers of colourful light cut through the darkness. While fireworks dissolve into nothing after a thunderous sound, shattered glass leaves material artifact. Sharp pieces then become a reminder of the real track that fireworks leave in the sky. “I have always been fascinated with fireworks. So I decided to portray its immitation.” ---Source: Z. Picpauer https://fud.ujep.cz/sites/digitalni-media/student/zdenek-picpauer/

The primary motif of the documentary is the journey. A metaphorical journey, a spiritual journey, a tangible journey, a forest path, a road, a sidewalk, a drug trip, or a journey abroad. The director pastes together a collage of micro-stories of people and places that comment on the journey. Her documentary oscillates between playful absurdism, existentialism and existential questions, environmentalism, and social commentary. The dynamism and rhythm of the narrative are then determined by the jumps between different forms of video, such as analogue film, digital film, and mobile phone filming.“I think there's this idea of adventure, that you go somewhere straight, and you don’t know where you're going. It doesn’t matter where you go, as long as you get somewhere.” — Roman Prahl, art historian

This impressionistic urban symphony captures Manila as a place of fascinating contrasts. Poverty clashes with the construction boom, the lingering beggars with rushing cars and pedestrians. Counterpoints are both a meaning-making and stylistic element. One poetically mirrors the other.

Belgrade’s Museum of the Revolution was meant to become another Brutalist monument celebrating socialism in Yugoslavia. Its construction plan later failed and this desolate building from 1961 is now a refuge for homeless people. Among them is a young mother with her child and Mara, an aging woman. Their lives could not be placed further away from the utopian visions of the perfect world. The Serbian filmmaker Srđan Keča moulded his 2014 video installation into a documentary, a humble glimpse into a fragile personal cosmos lying aside from all social structures. It takes note of a world amid emptiness, on the brink of state affairs, outside of the major population’s field of vision, with human lives flowing slowly through.“There’s a whole genre of socialist ruin porn, especially in photography with Yugoslav monuments, representing them as if some alien civilization built them and playing with SF [science fiction] tropes, but these monuments have histories and represent histories.”---Source: https://povmagazine.com/srdan-keca-on-museum-of-the-revolution-and-documenting-paradise-lost/

Abdi spent his childhood in Mogadishu during the civil war. Now he designs and makes furniture in the Netherlands. In the past, he repeatedly witnessed violence and war crimes. After he emigrated, he broke the law himself and ended up in prison. His neighbor happened to be filmmaker Douwe Dijkstra. Together, they decided to reconstruct and take a better look at Abdi's childhood and youth full of traumatizing incidents. Besides not-always-reliable memories, their tools include Dijkstra's special-effects studio with a green screen and many miniature models. The film is both a biography and a stimulating deconstruction of an effort to grasp someone else's past.“My process is very investigative, working through research and experimentation. But then I also find that in this ‘making of’ approach, it is never about the technical side of things. For me, it’s always about showing the perspective of me as a filmmaker, or the way I relate to the topic or to my protagonist or subject.” — Douwe Dijkstra---Source: https://businessdoceurope.com/locarno-ff-neighbour-abdi-by-douwe-dijkstra/

Štefan Pongo and his family left the Czech Republic for Britain to escape racial stereotypes and discrimination. To have a normal life. And they did—that is, until he decided to respond on the internet to the racist rhetoric of Czech President Miloš Zeman. The truck driver’s fate then took a major turn. The sensitively conceived personal and family portrait is a film-argument that juxtaposes simplistic, chauvinistic assessments with a full-blooded picture in which race issues are more of a problem to be solved than a lived reality. It tells the story of a journey there and back, across countries, beliefs, and our conscience.“I was wondering how the Roma who had emigrated to the UK were doing, so I went there and tracked down a trucker named Štefan Pongo and his big, wonderful family.”---Source: http://www.romea.cz/cz/kultura/premiera-dokumentarniho-filmu-pongo-calling-probehne-v-patek-na-mezinarodnim-filmovem-festivalu-docfest-v-sheffield  

What does the world look like from a non-human perspective? This surprisingly poetic film, which can be boldly described as an example of pure cinema, takes us on a journey through the seasons using security camera footage from various parts of the world. Individual, seemingly neutral snippets of life look like moving canvases with paintings or postcards that allow us to see places we could never otherwise visit. The cameras, like surveillance tools, reveal the unexpected beauty of industrial spaces, private buildings, and natural landscapes.“Self-Portrait takes charge of its own interpretations, imaginings, and fictions for each moment, but aims still to leave room for the subjectivity of viewers, allowing them to find their own meaning or to slip into their own fictions.”

A meditative film revealing urban and natural recesses crossed by endless nooks of industrial piping intertwining its surroundings like a Uroboros serpent. The pipes guide the camera eye across large fields and blocks of flats, connecting canoeists, kids at play and a bubbling stream, serving as silent witnesses to their living existence.„Jsme tu společně a naše činy ovlivňují další lidi a prostor, ve kterém se nacházíme.“---Source: https://afo.cz/host/sarah-lomenova/

Pier Luigi, called Gigi, is a rural policeman who spends his days investigating minor offenses, flirting with a new colleague over the radio, and arguing with his neighbor about his overgrown garden. But one suicide case keeps him up at night, and he begins to investigate whether there is something more behind it. The slow narrative, absurd situations, and the protagonist’s character evoke European art films. The pleasant atmosphere of the unforced passage of time and the stories from the life of Gigi and the people around him create an engaging, empathetic, and at times dreamily poetic film.  “A poetic comedic documentary reminiscing of Tati’s Mon Oncle.” — Cirriere della Sera ---Source: https://shellacfilms.com/international-sales/gigi-la-legge

CEO salaries are skyrocketing. The wages of ordinary employees have increased only slightly. According to one survey, a fifth of workers view their bosses as rivals. Most of them aren’t happy in their jobs and don’t find them fulfilling. To better understand this dynamic, John Webster takes the ideas of anthropologist David Graeber and returns to early factory models. Today’s employees describe the reality behind the glossy corporate facade: stress, incompetent management, and burnout syndrome. A black-humored analysis of capitalist work seeks to answer the question of whether it is possible to be happy at work today. „I do hope it encourages people to talk in the workplace about what is going on – probably half to two thirds of the people [in offices] feel the same – and to question the way things are done.“ — John Webster ---Source: https://businessdoceurope.com/cphdox-interview-the-happy-worker-or-how-bullshit-took-over-the-workplace-by-john-webster/

The last Prior, an unrenovated socialist department store, no longer meets the standards of modern shopping centers. It rather resembles a well-preserved open-air museum where time has stood still to allow its peculiar inhabitants to relive the eighties indefinitely. A film about what it looks like when genius loci swallows everything around it. “Nothing makes sense here.”

An eccentric Polish couple owns one of the largest pawnshops in Europe, where together with three dedicated employees they try to earn a living every single day. They buy and sell almost anything you can imagine: religious relics, sex books, mammoth teeth, you name it. At the same time, they’re also highly valued members of their Silesian small-town community where they’re seen by their fellow citizens as good Samaritans and therapists. This tragicomic film, which uses the at-times absurd and diverse pawnshop as an example, thematizes the socio-economic problems of the Polish border: from poverty and a lack of jobs to alcoholism and domestic violence.“It's the kind of tragicomic gaze that makes this film such a pleasure to watch, and the fact that the titular pawnshop is located on Perseverance Street really does say it all.” (Marta Bałaga)---Source: https://www.cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/423793/

A babysitter, a bunch of laborers, and a long-haul truck driver. All were born in Slovakia, but after the country joined the EU, they took the opportunity to work elsewhere in the Schengen zone. During week-long work shifts in Austria, Germany, or on European motorways, they try to get used to their foreign environments while struggling to maintain contact with their children and partners. For their future, they left for better-paying jobs. Now they are losing them by their absence. They don't know what awaits them when they return home. A trio of saddening stories compose a laconic portrait of a globalised labour market that allows people to fulfil their dreams, but often at great sacrifice.

A meditative symphony on the city and death. The filmmaker returns to places where he, 18 years earlier, had made a film about suicide. Now, in the crowded streets of Tehran and in the city’s rundown corners with flanked walls, he searches for the reasons that had led three sisters to end their lives together.“Their lives summarized in a few sentences; sentences are all in the past tense, there is no future nor present.”

The protagonist of the film is Pavel, a pensioner who keeps hoarding things in his apartment. Pavel is convinced of the value of his collection although he doesn’t actually know it. The film is a meditation on the issue of hoarding and the need to own things in general. The filmmaker enhances the image with the help of rotoscoping, intensifying the emptiness of the captured space.“I figured out I’m my own worst enemy. To fight your own self is the hardest.” — Pavel, the protagonist

Time is not linear, but rather a loop that has no beginning or end. Life doesn't move forward, but instead zigzags back and forth between what we want and what we’re meant to do. This is why sometimes we find ourselves at a crossroads in the middle of the night with nothing left but to ponder which of the three paths we must take as the rain washes down on us. “Whenever I take a look at myself, I always wish I loved myself more.”

Yoyogi is a park located in the center of Tokyo and the setting as well as the main character of this documentary. However, it is not the director’s intention to present the history of the park – apart from the opening title, the audience will not learn any facts about it. The documentary without voiceover captures the park and its visitors only with a static camera and soft editing. Children playing on a monument, a couple on a bench hugging under an umbrella, young men competing in a rap battle, a homeless man passed by somebody, a girl making a TikTok video, a group of black men singing a song in a foreign language. A meditative observation.“This film combines two strange and seemingly overlapping peculiarities. On the one hand, there is a distant, almost scientific in its dryness, observation of ordinary scenes of people’s life in the park, on the other hand, a feeling of some kind of magic and the impossibility of what is happening.”---Source: https://allfilm.ee/work/yoyogi-haiku/