當代精選

France Is Our Mother Country

France Is Our Mother Country is a story of an encounter between two cultures, two sensibilities, and two imaginations. This encounter resulted in a colonisation with no less brutality than others. By juxtaposing clips of archival footage, from the time of Cambodia’s occupation by France, and their title cards, the film examines the colonial history of Indochina.

The Event

In August 1991, a failed coup d’état attempt in Moscow (known as Putsch) signalled the fall of the Soviet Union. Thousands of people poured into the streets of Leningrad to be part of the event which was supposed to change their destiny. Sergei LOZNITSA revisits the dramatic moments of August 1991 and casts an eye on the event hailed worldwide as the birth of ‘Russian democracy’.

I Am the People

As the Egyptian people rise up in Tahrir Square, rural villagers in the south are watching the revolution on TV. From the overthrow of MUBARAK to the fall of MORSI, the film follows the upheavals through the eyes of Farraj, a peasant in the Nile valley near Luxor. In the daily life of the farmer, between hopes and disappointments, change is a long time coming.

Homeland (Iraq Year Zero)

This two-part documentary chronicles the everyday life in Iraq before and after the U.S. invasion. In Part I, the director filmed a group of Iraqis, mostly members of his family, in their expectation of the war. This part ends with the start of U.S. strikes on Baghdad. Part II shows the consequences of this invasion on the main characters. It ends with the violent death of the filmmaker’s nephew, twelve-year-old Haidar.

Balikbayan #1 Memories of Overdevelopment Redux III

Returning to an unfinished film project he first started in 1979, Kidlat TAHIMIK carries with him the history of the Philippines, for which he spent the last thirty-five years searching. From the circumnavigation of the globe by Ferdinand MAGELLAN, to that by Enrique the slave, he brews the memories of homeland into reality – a continuously renewed journey of memory and identity.

No Home Movie

This film is, above all else, about my late mother, about this woman who came to Belgium in 1938, fleeing Poland, the pogroms, and the abuses. We only see her in her apartment in Brussels. It’s a film about the changing world that my mother does not see.