Brimstone & Glory[/caption]
Three films – Viktor Jakovleski’s Brimstone & Glory, Matthew Heineman’s City of Ghosts and Yance Ford’s Strong Island – lead the 2018 Cinema Eye Honors nominations with 4 apiece. Five films received three nominations: Yuri Ancarani’s The Challenge, Jeff Orlowski’s Chasing Coral, Agnès Varda and JR’s Faces Places, Brett Morgen’s Jane and Jonathan Olshefski’s Quest.
City of Ghosts, Faces Places, Quest and Strong Island are joined in the Outstanding Nonfiction Feature category by Frederick Weisman’s Ex Libris: The New York Public Library and Feras Fayyad’s Last Men in Aleppo. Kitty Green (Casting Jon Benet) joins the aforementioned Yuri Ancarani, Yance Ford, Matthew Heineman, Agnés Varda and JR, and Frederick Wiseman as a nominee in the Outstanding Achievement in Direction category.
With his nomination, Frederick Wiseman becomes the first filmmaker in Cinema Eye history to be nominated three times for Outstanding Direction, having been previously nominated for La Danse – The Paris Opera Ballet and In Jackson Heights. He also received Cinema Eye’s 2012 Legacy Award for his 1967 classic Titicut Follies. Agnès Varda won the Outstanding Direction Award in 2010 for The Beaches of Agnés.
Outstanding Direction nominees Kitty Green and Yuri Ancarani were both previously nominated for Outstanding Nonfiction Short, Green in 2016 for The Face of Ukraine: Casting Oksana Baiul and Ancarani was nominated twice for Il Capo (2012) and Da Vinci (2014).
Chasing Coral received three nominations, including a nod for Outstanding Cinematography for director Jeff Orlowski, an Honor he won in 2013 for Chasing Ice. Stefan Nadelman, nominated for his Graphic Design work on the Grateful Dead documentary Long Strange Trip, won the same award in 2016 for Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck.
Ten films were nominated for the annual Audience Choice Prize, which includes many of the year’s most popular and talked about nonfiction films, notably Brett Morgen’s Jane, Ceyda Torun’s Kedi, Amanda Lipitz’ Step, Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis’ Whose Streets? and Gethin Aldous and Jairus McLeary’s The Work. The winner in this category is voted on by the general public.
This year’s Broadcast Nonfiction Filmmaking category includes a number of notable filmmakers, among them a previous Cinema Eye winner and a nominee. Fisher Stevens, a winner for Outstanding Production and Feature for The Cove (2010), is nominated this year with his co-director Alexis Bloom for Bright Lights: Starring Carrie FIsher and Debbie Reynolds (HBO). Ryan White, who was nominated for Production in 2015 for The Case Against 8, is up this year for his Netflix series The Keepers. Oscar nominee Ava DuVernay received her first Cinema Eye nomination for her Netflix film 13th, while veteran filmmaker Kristi Jacobson gets her first nod for the HBO feature doc Solitary: Inside Red Onion State Prison.
This year’s winners will be announced at the 2018 Honors Awards Ceremony on Thursday, January 11, 2018 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. The ceremony will be hosted, for the third consecutive year, by award-winning nonfiction filmmaker Steve James (The Interrupters, Life Itself, Hoop Dreams), who is a Cinema Eye nominee this year for his latest film, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail.
Taste of Cement
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BRIMSTONE AND GLORY , CITY OF GHOSTS and STRONG ISLAND Lead Cinema Eye Honors Nominations
[caption id="attachment_24386" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Brimstone & Glory[/caption]
Three films – Viktor Jakovleski’s Brimstone & Glory, Matthew Heineman’s City of Ghosts and Yance Ford’s Strong Island – lead the 2018 Cinema Eye Honors nominations with 4 apiece. Five films received three nominations: Yuri Ancarani’s The Challenge, Jeff Orlowski’s Chasing Coral, Agnès Varda and JR’s Faces Places, Brett Morgen’s Jane and Jonathan Olshefski’s Quest.
City of Ghosts, Faces Places, Quest and Strong Island are joined in the Outstanding Nonfiction Feature category by Frederick Weisman’s Ex Libris: The New York Public Library and Feras Fayyad’s Last Men in Aleppo. Kitty Green (Casting Jon Benet) joins the aforementioned Yuri Ancarani, Yance Ford, Matthew Heineman, Agnés Varda and JR, and Frederick Wiseman as a nominee in the Outstanding Achievement in Direction category.
With his nomination, Frederick Wiseman becomes the first filmmaker in Cinema Eye history to be nominated three times for Outstanding Direction, having been previously nominated for La Danse – The Paris Opera Ballet and In Jackson Heights. He also received Cinema Eye’s 2012 Legacy Award for his 1967 classic Titicut Follies. Agnès Varda won the Outstanding Direction Award in 2010 for The Beaches of Agnés.
Outstanding Direction nominees Kitty Green and Yuri Ancarani were both previously nominated for Outstanding Nonfiction Short, Green in 2016 for The Face of Ukraine: Casting Oksana Baiul and Ancarani was nominated twice for Il Capo (2012) and Da Vinci (2014).
Chasing Coral received three nominations, including a nod for Outstanding Cinematography for director Jeff Orlowski, an Honor he won in 2013 for Chasing Ice. Stefan Nadelman, nominated for his Graphic Design work on the Grateful Dead documentary Long Strange Trip, won the same award in 2016 for Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck.
Ten films were nominated for the annual Audience Choice Prize, which includes many of the year’s most popular and talked about nonfiction films, notably Brett Morgen’s Jane, Ceyda Torun’s Kedi, Amanda Lipitz’ Step, Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis’ Whose Streets? and Gethin Aldous and Jairus McLeary’s The Work. The winner in this category is voted on by the general public.
This year’s Broadcast Nonfiction Filmmaking category includes a number of notable filmmakers, among them a previous Cinema Eye winner and a nominee. Fisher Stevens, a winner for Outstanding Production and Feature for The Cove (2010), is nominated this year with his co-director Alexis Bloom for Bright Lights: Starring Carrie FIsher and Debbie Reynolds (HBO). Ryan White, who was nominated for Production in 2015 for The Case Against 8, is up this year for his Netflix series The Keepers. Oscar nominee Ava DuVernay received her first Cinema Eye nomination for her Netflix film 13th, while veteran filmmaker Kristi Jacobson gets her first nod for the HBO feature doc Solitary: Inside Red Onion State Prison.
This year’s winners will be announced at the 2018 Honors Awards Ceremony on Thursday, January 11, 2018 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. The ceremony will be hosted, for the third consecutive year, by award-winning nonfiction filmmaker Steve James (The Interrupters, Life Itself, Hoop Dreams), who is a Cinema Eye nominee this year for his latest film, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail.
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I AM NOT A WITCH and TASTE OF CEMENT Win at 2017 Adelaide Film Festival
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I AM NOT A WITCH[/caption]
I Am Not A Witch and documentary Taste of Cement are the top prize winning films of the 2017 Adelaide Film Festival. The festival named Nothing Happens, the winner of the inaugural AFTRS International VR Award.
The 2017 ADL Film Fest International Feature Award winner, I Am Not A Witch, is the feature debut of Zambia-born Welsh director Rungano Nyoni, and tells the tale of Shaula, a young, Zambian orphan banished from her village to a ‘witch camp.’ The Jury hailed the film as “unique and bold … surprisingly funny … a bold debut from a bright new talent.”
The 2017 Flinders University International Best Documentary Award goes to Ziad Kalthoum’s Taste of Cement. The film details the tale of Syrian Construction workers who are virtually imprisoned on the site of the Beirut skyscrapers they build. It celebrated its Australian Premiere at ADL Film Fest, and was applauded by the Jury; “a poetic unfolding … we admire the filmmaker’s audacity, ambition and heart … Ziad is a director of talent.”
For the 2017 GU Film House Audience Awards, as voted by the audiences, Best Feature went to Warwick Thornton’s frontier western – Sweet Country, Jill Bilcock: Dancing the Invisible scooped up Best Documentary; and Oddlands took Best Short.
Inspired by real events, Sweet Country is a period western set in 1929 in the outback Northern Territory. When Aboriginal stockman Sam (Hamilton Morris) kills white station owner Harry March (Ewen Leslie) in self-defence, Sam and his wife Lizzie (Natassia Gorey-Furber) go on the run. They are pursued across the outback, through glorious but harsh desert country.
With credits including Strictly Ballroom, Muriel’s Wedding, The Dish, Moulin Rouge!, Romeo + Juliet and Road to Perdition Jill Bilcock is regarded as one the world’s great film editors. Axel Grigor’s hugely entertaining documentary Jill Bilcock: Dancing the Invisible, traces Bilcock’s journey from Melbourne film student in the 1960s to working as an extra in Bollywood movies and learning her craft when Australia had virtually no feature film industry.
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TASTE OF CEMENT, QUEST Among 2017 Camden International Film Festival Award Winners
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Quest[/caption]
On Sunday, September 17, the Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) hosted their annual Awards Ceremony, with the Audience Award going to Jonathan Olshefski’s QUEST.Overall the festival presented four awards for documentary features and one for a documentary short, in addition to its Points North Pitch Award.
The 2017 class of Points North Fellows includes James Sorrels and Joshua Louis Simon’s AREA 2, Eva Weber’s GHOST WIVES, Claire Sanford and Adam Pajot-Gendron’s HWANGSA, Jessica Earnshaw and Holly Meehl’s JACINTA, Hassan Fazili and Emelie Mahdavian’s MIDNIGHT TRAVELER, and Todd Chandler’s UNTITLED SAFER SCHOOLS PROJECT.
Each of these projects in development received a $1,000 cash grant from the Points North Institute. This year’s Points North Pitch Award, which included in-kind post-production services from Boston-based Modulus Studios, went to MIDNIGHT TRAVELER. During the pitch, the project was offered an additional $10,000 by the Ford Foundation’s JustFilms.
Last year, CIFF became an Academy-qualifying festival for short films, making the winner of the Camden Cartel Award for Best Short eligible to enter the Documentary Short Subject competition for the Academy. The award went to Ben Knight’s THE LAST HONEY HUNTER, with Special Jury mention going to Adam and Zack Khalil’s THE VIOLENCE OF A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT SECRETS.
For the third year, CIFF collaborated with long-time partner, Documentary Educational Resources, to present the John Marshall Award for Contemporary Ethnographic Media, awarded this year to Tala Hadid’s HOUSE IN THE FIELDS.
Jurors Iyabo Boyd (Producer), Brett Story (Filmmaker), and James N. Kienitz Wilkins (Filmmaker) awarded the 2017 Cinematic Vision Award to Martin Dicicco’s ALL THAT PASSES BY THROUGH A WINDOW THAT DOESN’T OPEN, with Special Jury Mention going to Drew Xanthopolous’s THE SENSITIVES.
The Jury stated that DiCicco’s film “stood out as an inherently political yet free-flowing and contemplative film with moments of humor and melancholia that used a classic metaphor for cinema to explore how the past is embedded, if not stuck, in the present moment. This film is unique for its autonomy in both content and technical execution — a portrait of laborers who must trust that their life work will mean something someday, and a filmmaker who spent years on an intense and often lonely journey as combined director, producer and cinematographer.”
This year’s jury of Molly O’Brien (Fork Films), Robb Moss (Filmmaker), and Jose Rodriguez (Tribeca Film Institute) awarded the 2017 Harrell Award for Best Documentary Feature to Ziad Kalthoum’s TASTE OF CEMENT, with Special Jury Mention going to Gustavo Salmerón’s LOTS OF KIDS, A MONKEY AND A CASTLE. The Jury stated the winning film was chosen “For its masterful use of visual metaphor, breathtaking sound design and poetic restraint in telling the chaotic story of war and its exiles.”
The 14th edition of the Camden International Film Festival will take place September 13 to 16, 2018. Submissions will open in January 2018.
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PURGE THIS LAND, Docu on Racism in America, Wins London’s Open City Documentary Festival
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Purge This Land[/caption]
Lee Anne Schmitt’s Purge This Land documentary on racism in America is the winner of the Grand Jury Award at London’s Open City Documentary Festival.
The film which received its UK Premiere at the Festival, retells the history of racism and slavery in modern America through the prism of John Brown – a white, militant abolitionist – who was sentenced to death in 1859 for a failed attempt to start an armed revolution.
The Grand Jury said: “This film is brave in tackling a subject so relevant and poignant. Lee Ann Schmitt is self-aware of her perspective and shows total control in her authorship. Hypnotic narration interlaced with carefully composed shots, archival footage and imagery asks the viewer to address the subject in a new way. The documentary projects the infinite complexities of the subject to the landscape, and so introduces the notion of the landscape itself being guilty. Schmitt centers the narrative around a white abolitionist and her own whiteness in relation to her family, which reveals the dark side of American history as inescapable, and as in need of confrontation as ever.”
Lee Anne Schmitt said: “I am thrilled. I would like to thank the Open City jury for this incredible honor. Having worked on the film for 6 years I’m keen to talk about it and share it with the world. As the film begins its journey this is a huge affirmation.”
Special Mention went to the film From a Year of Non-Events, by Ann Carolin Renninger & René Frölke
The Grand Jury said: “This is a charming film that surprised us with its playful editing. It offers a cinematically sensory experience.”
Open City’s Emerging International Filmmaker Award went to Ziad Kalthoum’s Taste Of Cement. An inventively cinematic portrait of exiled Syrian workers trapped in a skyscraper that they are building in Beirut and unable to shake off memories of the shelling of their own homes. The film also received its UK Premiere at the Festival.
The Emerging International Filmmaker Jury said: “An ambitious and powerful film with a formalism and distinct cinematic approach which captures the lives of Syrian workers in exile. Offering a meditation on construction and destruction set in modern day Lebanon. Yet presenting a timeless narrative of labour and of longing that resonates the world over. The film underlines the talent and promise of Ziad Kalthoum on the international documentary stage and we hope marks a new era in cinematic storytelling from the Middle East.”
Ziad Kalthoum said: “When a war breaks out, it means that language and logic among humans have failed, but what I found is that I can create a new language that speaks to people through cinema during wartime.
Thank you to the Open City Documentary Festival to give me this valuable opportunity to present the film Taste of Cement here in London, and special thanks to the jury and festival director Mr. Michael Stewart.”
Special Mention went to Memory Exercises by Paz Encina. The Grand Jury said: “A film which connects audiences with the forgotten story of the Paraguayan dictatorship through a multi layered and visceral cinematic language. Merging an intimate, personal story with the history of a region that is still confronting haunting memories from the recent past.”
The Best UK Short Award went to Alexithymia by Duncan Cowles. The Best UK Short Award Jury said: “An engaging and complex non-fiction short film. Well-crafted and edited with a creative approach to the documentary form. The jury is looking forward to watching this filmmaker’s career progress, and consider them an exciting new UK talent to watch.”
Duncan Cowles said: “I’m absolutely delighted that the film has been honored in this way. I made the film for absolutely zero money, and everyone who worked on it did so for free, so for it to be as well received as this feels great. Thanks very much to Open City for playing the film, nominating it and to the judges for awarding it.”
London’s Open City Documentary Festival hosted 36 UK Premieres and took place over 6 days, from September 5 to 10, 2017, with screenings and events spanning 13 London venues.
2017 London’s Open City Documentary Festival Award Winners
GRAND JURY AWARD Winner: Purge This Land, by Lee Anne Schmitt Special Mention: From a Year of Non-Events, by Ann Carolin Renninger & René Frölke EMERGING INTERNATIONAL FILMMAKER AWARD Winner: Taste of Cement by Ziad Kalthoum Special Mention: Memory Exercises by Paz Encina BEST UK SHORT AWARD – Supported by the British Council Winner: Alexithymia by Duncan Cowles
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15 Films in EFA Documentary Selection 2017: ‘SCHOOL LIFE’ ‘THE WAR SHOW’ and More
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DEAD DONKEYS FEAR NO HYENAS[/caption]
15 European documentaries have been recommended for a nomination for this year’s 2017 European Film Awards.
Ten documentary festivals have recommended to the committee one film each which has had its world premiere at the respective festival’s latest edition. Based on their recommendations and the films individually submitted, the EFA documentary committee decided on the EFA Documentary Selection.
EFA Members will now vote for five documentary nominations. Based on these nominations, the EFA Members will then elect the ‘European Documentary 2017’ which will be announced during the awards ceremony on December 9 in Berlin.
EFA Documentary Selection 2017
AUSTERLITZ Germany 94 min DIRECTED BY Sergei Loznitsa PRODUCED BY Sergei Loznitsa COMMUNION KOMUNIA Poland 72 min DIRECTED BY Anna Zamecka PRODUCED BY Zuzanna Krol, Anna Wydra, Izabela Lopuch & Hanka Kastelicova DEAD DONKEYS FEAR NO HYENAS Sweden, Germany, Finland 80 min DIRECTED BY Joakim Demmer PRODUCED BY Margarete Jangård, Heino Deckert & John Webster HOW TO MEET A MERMAID Netherlands, Denmark 90 min DIRECTED BY Coco Schrijber PRODUCED BY Frank van den Engel LA CHANA Spain, Iceland, USA 86 min DIRECTED BY Lucija Stojevic PRODUCED BY Lucija Stojevic, Greta Olafsdottir, Deirdre Towers & Susan Muska LIBERA NOS LIBERAMI Italy, France 90 min DIRECTED BY Federica Di Giacomo PRODUCED BY Francesco Virga & Paolo Santoni NOTHINGWOOD France, Germany 85 min DIRECTED BY Sonia Kronlund PRODUCED BY Laurent Lavolé & Melanie Andernach SCHOOL LIFE IN LOCO PARENTIS Ireland, Spain 99 min DIRECTED BY Neasa Ní Chianáin & David Rane PRODUCED BY David Rane, Montse Portabella, Angelo Orlando & Efthymia Zymvragaki STRANGER IN PARADISE Netherlands 72 min DIRECTED BY Guido Hendrikx PRODUCED BY Frank van den Engel TASTE OF CEMENT Germany, Lebanon, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Qatar 85 min DIRECTED BY Ziad Kalthoum PRODUCED BY Ansgar Frerich, Tobias Siebert & Eva Kemme THE GOOD POSTMAN Finland, Bulgaria 80 min DIRECTED BY Tonislav Hristov PRODUCED BY Kaarle Aho THE VENERABLE W LE VENERABLE W France, Switzerland 100 min DIRECTED BY Barbet Schroeder PRODUCED BY Margaret Menegoz & Lionel Baier THE WAR SHOW Denmark, Syria, Finland 100 min DIRECTED BY Andreas Dalsgaard & Obaidah Zytoon PRODUCED BY Miriam Nørgaard & Alaa Hassan ULTRA Hungary, Greece 81 min DIRECTED BY Balazs Simonyi PRODUCED BY Laszlo Jozsa, Balazs Simonyi, Rea Apostolides, Yuri Averof, Hanka Kastelicova & Anna Zavorszky WEST OF THE JORDAN RIVER A L’OUEST DU JOURDAIN France 124 min DIRECTED BY Amos Gitai PRODUCED BY Patricia Boutinard Rouelle, Romain Icard, Stéphanie Schorter, Amos Gitai, Shuki Friedman & Laurent Truchotv
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2017 Open City Documentary Festival Unveils Lineup
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MOTHERLAND OR DEATH, Vitaly Mansky[/caption]
The 2017 Open City Documentary Festival today announced the program for the 7th edition of the festival, taking place in London from September 5 to 10, 2017.
The festival opens on Tuesday September 5 with the UK Premiere of Ziad Kalthoum’s TASTE OF CEMENT an inventively cinematic portrait of exiled Syrian workers trapped in a skyscraper that they are building in Beirut and unable to shake off memories of the shelling of their own homes.
The UK Premiere of Lee Ann Schmitt’s PURGE THIS LAND will close the Festival on Sunday September 10. The film retells the history of racism and slavery in modern America through the prism of John Brown – a white, militant abolitionist – who was sentenced to death in 1859 for a failed attempt to start an armed revolution. Poignant and thought-provoking, the film spans one hundred and seventy years of American history and will screen at Regent Street Cinema.
IN FOCUS: VITALY MANSKY
Open City will celebrate the distinguished career of Ukrainian-born Vitaly Mansky – one of Russia’s most acclaimed documentary filmmakers who now lives in exile in Riga. Mansky has tirelessly chronicled political and social developments in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union through examining the struggles of everyday-lives. The films in this selection blend myth, reality, propaganda and fiction to reveal the many-sided legacy of the Soviet dream. PRIVATE CHRONICLES. MONOLOGUE, Vitaly Mansky, Russia, 1999 BROADWAY. BLACK SEA, Vitaly Mansky, Russia, 2002 GAGARIN’S PIONEERS, Vitaly Mansky, Russia, 2005 MOTHERLAND OR DEATH, Vitaly Mansky, Russia, 2011IN FOCUS: PIERRE-YVES VANDEWEERD
Open City will also showcase the work of Belgian filmmaker Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd by screening his three most recent films – a loose trilogy – including the UK Premiere of this year’s THE ETERNALS. Filmed mostly in 16mm and Super 8, and with scores from British avant-garde musician Richard Skelton, these extraordinary works investigate the correlation between war, madness and memory through the lives of those who are victims of conflict and exile. LOST LAND, Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd, Belgium, 2011 FOR THE LOST, Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd, Belgium, 2014 THE ETERNALS (UK Premiere), Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd, Belgium, 2017AWARDS AND COMPETITIONS:
GRAND JURY AWARD
BITTER MONEY (UK Premiere), Wang Bing, China, 2016 FROM A YEAR OF NON-EVENTS (UK Premiere), Ann Carolin Renninger & René Frölke, Germany, 2017 PURGE THIS LAND (UK Premiere), Lee Anne Schmitt, USA, 2017 THE ETERNALS (UK Premiere), Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd, Belgium, 2017EMERGING INTERNATIONAL FILMMAKER AWARD
A MOON OF NICKEL AND ICE (UK Premiere), François Jacob, Quebec, 2016 ATELIER DE CONVERSATION (UK Premiere), Bernhard Braunstein, Austria / France / Liechtenstein, 2017 MEMORY EXERCISES (UK Premiere), Paz Encina, Paraguay, 2016 TASTE OF CEMENT (UK Premiere), Ziad Kalthoum, Germany / Lebanon / Syria / United Arab Emirates / Qatar, 2017OFFICIAL SELECTION
ALMOST HEAVEN, Carol Salter, UK, 2017 BURNING OUT (UK Premiere), Jerome Le Maire, Belgium, 2016 CALABRIA (UK Premiere), Pierre-François Sauter, Switzerland, 2016 CONTEMPORARY COLOR (UK Premiere), Ross Bros, USA, 2016 CRAIGSLIST ALLSTARS (UK Premiere), Samira Elagoz, The Netherlands / Finland, 2016 DARK SKULL (UK Premiere), Kiro Russo, Bolivia / Qatar, 2016 DONKEYOTE, Chico Pereira, Germany / UK / Spain, 2017 LIBERA NOS, Federica Di Giacomo, Italy / France, 2016 LINEFORK (UK Premiere), Jeff Silver, USA, 2016 95 AND 6 TO GO (UK Premiere), Kimi Takesue, 2016 PHOTON (UK Premiere), Norman Leto, Poland, 2017 PUMP (UK Premiere), Joseph David, France, 2017 REBEL OF THE KEYS, Mark Charles, UK, 2016 SANCTUARY (UK Premiere), Ashley Sabin / David Redmon, Canada / USA / United Kingdom, 2017 SMALL TALK (UK Premiere), Hui-chen Huang, Taiwan, 2016 SPECTRES ARE HAUNTING EUROPE, Maria Kourkouta / Niki Giannari, France / Greece, 2016 THE LURE, Tomas Leach, UK, 2016SPECIAL EVENTS:
MARC ISAACS: OUT OF TIME In his first ever video exhibition, filmmaker Marc Isaacs will present four new works offering an encounter with intimacy, human fragility and the passage of time. Isaacs goes back to original material gathered over a fifteen year period and which has mostly never been screened before. THE PLAYROOM BOOTHS / DON’T ASK, DON’T APOLOGISE Three story enclaves will bring together an immersive set, video projection and interviews taking people into the story of rave, soundsystem and queer culture – exploring how these alternative scenes not only changed the musical landscape but also, by physically reclaiming city space changed how we relate to its invisible power structures. THE ISLAND OF ST MATTHEWS Open City will present a special prelude to Tate Modern’s So I Can Get Them Told season, a retrospective of the films of American artist Kevin Jerome Everson. This screening features Everson’s 16mm feature film The Island of St. Matthews, a poem and paean to the citizens of Westport, Mississippi, recalling all that was lost during the 1973 flooding of a nearby river. EDGE The Edge project is a narrative driven exploration of contemporary situated practice in ‘edge’ urban settings, focusing on in-between spaces and the creative ways to which these can be used. Screenings will be held at three locations each of which are situated on the High Speed 1 rail link (HS1) route between London and Folkestone and will explore one of the symposiums’ three key themes – Gateway, Periphery and Border. In association with Urban Labs, Film + Place + Architecture and The Bartlett School of Architecture. WHICKER’S WORLD FOUNDATION PRESENTS: WE WERE KINGS Open City will host the World Premiere of We Were Kings in partnership with the British Library, a rediscovery of Burma’s lost royal family. Deposed and exiled by Britain, they are now emerging from the shadows in a country experiencing seismic change. This intriguing documentary won the Whicker’s World Foundation inaugural Funding Award for historian and first time director, Alex Bescoby. ANAGRAM PRESENTS THE DAY IS MY ENEMY This special live event will bring together rarely seen film archive charting the story of how music subculture has shaped the metropolis with a live soundtrack scored in collaboration with musicians.SHORTS:
This year’s shorts’ program promises an eclectic selection of shorts from across the globe and compilations include A PLACE TO BE, FRAGMENTS OF THE INFINITE, LOST IN TIME and SMALL HOURS. The nominees for the Best UK Short Award include Duncan Cowles’ ALEXITHYMIA, Oliver Wilkins’ HIDDEN, Tom Jeffrey’s INHERENT and Marie-Cécile Embleton’s THE WATCHMAKER. DocHeads will also be partnering with Open City to present a special program of some of the best short form documentaries made in the UK. JOHN SMITH: LOST IN LEYTONSTONE John Smith’s short films, known for their anarchic wit and oblique narratives, create mysterious and sometimes fantastical scenarios from documentary records of everyday life. Open City will screen a trio of his short films (THE BLACK TOWER, SLOW GLASS and BLIGHT) which all focus on the built environment and were made between 1985 and 1996, while Smith was living in short-term housing in Leytonstone. BY HYPER MEDIA, FOR HYPER MEDIA Lost Futures will present a series of recent artists’ moving image works exploring the internet, digital technologies, virtual realities and other forms of networked existence. Together these short films open a window into outer realms of the digital present, ruminate on our connected past, or speculate towards unknown futures.INDUSTRY EVENTS:
Open City offers a comprehensive package for industry delegates which includes entry to press and industry screenings, workshops, surgeries, panels and access to the Festival Video Library. Highlights from the industry programme include: a Vitaly Mansky masterclass, Mania Akbari talking The Body Politic, John Smith’s Give Chance a Chance, a workshop discussing the fictionalising turn in Radical Anthropological film, the Essay Film Festival workshop on bringing experimental sensibility into documentary film culture, a day dedicated to sound and audio including sessions presented by In the Dark and School of Sound and a masterclass on intimacy and performance from Kaitlin Prest of The Heart podcast. There will also be five days of VR exhibition and discussion. On Wednesday 6 September, Digital Catapult will host six sessions with leading international immersive and interactive storytellers. Speakers include Arnaud Colinart (Notes on Blindness), Lindsey Dryden (Unrest) and William Uricchio (MIT Open Documentary Lab). From Thursday 7, eight of the best current VR experiences will be on public exhibition at Bargehouse, Southbank.
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UK Premiere of TASTE OF CEMENT to open London’s Open City Documentary Festival
Taste Of Cement, Ziad Kalthoum’s highly-acclaimed portrait of exiled Syrian construction workers building a skyscraper in Beirut while at the same time their own homes are being shelled, will open London’s Open City Documentary Festival. The film will receive its UK Premiere on Tuesday September 5, 2017, at Picturehouse Central.
Open City Documentary Festival champions new voices in non-fiction storytelling and the program offers a chance to see the best in contemporary, international documentary as well as filmmaker Q&As, industry panels, workshops, networking and parties. The 7th Open City Documentary Festival takes place over six days in venues across London from 5 September to 10 September 2017.
Michael Stewart, Founder of Open City Docs, said: “We are delighted to open this year’s festival with the beautiful, poignant Taste Of Cement. At Open City our aim is to create an open space to nurture and champion the most innovative and creative documentary filmmakers from across the globe and Ziad Kalthoum’s mesmerizing film epitomizes this perfectly.”