2012

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) was once considered as the expansive tidal flats connecting the Dadu and Zhuoshui River estuaries in southeastern Taiwan as one of Asia’s most significant wetland areas and this area was once one of Taiwan’s most important bird habitats. But the passage of time has increasingly distanced the local fishing villages from the sea and its sustenance.

CONFESSIONS is not your typical Eco-film. It's the true 30-year odyssey of the adventures of Captain Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, as seen through the eyes of longest serving crew member, activist and filmmaker Peter Jay Brown. This documentary grants the viewer an intimate look at shipboard life amongst the most radical conservation moment in the world, who gave birth to the modern day environmental movement as we know it today.

THE SOUND Of OLD ROOMS is a film that has taken 20 years to complete. Filmed entirely in Calcutta in a combination of cinema-verite and neorealist styles from 1991-2011, this up-close documentary takes the viewer through the life experiences of Sarthak, an ordinary Indian man trying to hold on to his calling of being a poet while juggling a regular family.

From the daily diary of Oldrich S. which he wrote one sentence a day recording his impression of an incident, the village life or international events from 1981-2005, the director chooses eighty of the entries and pieces together zany animation. Edging between fact and fake, what lies in CHRONICLE is an interesting question - When the presentation is completely reconstructed, even the voice of the documented character, can we still call it documentary? Or does that even matter?

TEA OR ELECTRICITY tells the epic story of the implementation of electricity in a tiny isolated village enclosed in the middle of the Moroccan High Atlas. Over more than three years and season after season, the director patiently reveals the outlines of the net that will inevitably end up closing on the people of Ifri. Before our eyes are drafted the image of the merciless modernity that the small village will now be connected to.