12-17 juni 2008:
| Oslo Dokumentarkino presents The International Documentary Program at the 2008 Shortfilm Festival in Grimstad (Kortfilmfestivalen) | |
  To See if I'm Smiling Tamar Yarom, Israel 2007, 59 min Check screening times in the festival program on: www.kortfilmfestivalen.no | To See if I'm Smiling The six Israeli women featured in To See If I'm Smiling wrestle with memories of their compulsory military service and with the residual moral guilt about what they experienced. After years of trying to bury the past, they have spoken out in a film that explores the impact of conflict on a generation of young men and women. Director Tamar Yarom served in the Israeli Defence Force in 1988. She comments: "You expect women to be more sensitive to suffering and more empathetic to the other side. But the strength of the film is how it shows what happens to human beings in such a warped situation, and how women are not immune". -How could I ever think I'd forget... is what one of the young women asks herself in the film. Anyone who sees this film will also find it hard to forget. Director Tamar Yarom (b. 1971) comes from Jaffa. In 1995 she earned her Bachelor's Degree in Psychology from The Jerusalem Hebrew University. She has graduated from the London Film School in 1999 with distinction. She won the Fujifilm Scholarship Award for her film The Woman Who Wanted To Fly. Her film Sob Skirt, based on her personal experiences as a soldier in the First Intifada, won the Best Drama Award at The Haifa International Film Festival in 2002. |
 Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go Kim Longinotto, UK 2007, 100 min Check screening times in the festival program on: www.kortfilmfestivalen.no | Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go For the forty children who call it home, Mulberry Bush is their last chance. Excluded from school for extreme behaviour, and often having suffered severe emotional trauma, they are given three years at the Oxford boarding school to try to turn their lives around. Acclaimed documentary maker Kim Longinotto has once again turned her compassionate lens onto people living in extraordinary circumstances. The fragile young boys at the heart of her film lash out in shockingly extreme ways -hitting, swearing and spitting their way through the misery of their blighted childhoods. Endlessly patient and determined staff members verbally reason with the boys, whilst often having to restrain them physically. Hold Me Tight is ultimately a heartbreaking, engrossing study of dysfunction - of what happens when families break down. It also pays witness to the tremendous influence that adults hold - for bad and for good - upon growing children. Director Kim Longinotto (b.1952) is an internationally acclaimed director and one of the pre-eminent documentary filmmakers working today, renowned for creating extraordinary human portraits and tackling controversial topics with sensitivity and compassion. She studied camera and directing at the National Film School. Longinotto’s films have won international acclaim and dozens of premiere awards at festivals worldwide. Films (selected): Eat the Kimono (1989), Dream Girls (1993), Divorce Iranian Style 1998), The Day I Will Never Forget (2002) and Sisters in Law (2005). |
 The Tailor (El Sastre) Oscar Perez, Spain 2007, 30 min Screening together with All White in Barking Check screening times in the festival program on: www.kortfilmfestivalen.no | The Tailor Mohamed, a Pakistani tailor, and Singh, his Indian employee, work in an 4x2m store in Barcelona’s Raval district, one of the city’s poorest neighbourhood. Mohamed is very bad-tempered and the only things he cares for are his business and his religious belief. Singh works illegally for a miserable amount of money. This tragicomedy shows how, in such a reduced space, loneliness and isolation seem to be the only destiny. The Tailor is a minimalist film that turns a concrete reality into an almost abstract event. It is a portrait that manages to create a whole universe just by using a very reduced space and its peculiar character. The Tailor tells much more about immigration issues than some of the very didactic documentaries and reportages that we are used to. Angel Quintana, Film Critic Director Oscar Pérez (b. 1973) comes from Girona in Spain. He studied in England at the The London College of Communication where he obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Film. He lectures on the Masters on Creative Documentary course at Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Perez has written and directed numerous documentaries that have been broadcast on Spanish National TV. Xavó-Xaví (2002) and Can Tunis (2002, 22 min.) are the most successful. Mr. Easter was his first 50 minute documentary. |
  All White in Barking, Marc Isaacs, UK 2007, 73 min Screening together with The Tailor Check screening times in the festival program on: www.kortfilmfestivalen.no | All White in Barking Filmmaker, Marc Isaacs, examines with charm and humour modern attitudes towards race in Barking, a white working class town to the East of London. Through the lives of five key characters from different ethnic backgrounds, Isaacs, a prominent but unseen presence, questions prejudices, and pries at preconceptions with remarkable results. The film at times plays like a Mike Leigh comedy, particularly when the filmmaker urges a white resident to meet up with her Nigerian neighbours. This is a charming and often funny examination of modern attitudes in an increasingly multiethnic Britain. The messages are, however, universal, touching on how humanity expresses itself when local communities can no longer avoid the effects of globalisation reaching their doorsteps. Director Marc Isaacs was born very near the location of his first film, Lift (2001), in London's East End. He directed two further documentaries for the BBC about the sub-culture of shoplifting, both nominated for a BAFTA Craft Award in the UK. Travellers (2002) was followed by Calais: The Last Border (2003) and Philip and His Seven Wives (2006) which achieved very high viewing figures on NRK that same year. |
   Rebellion - The Litvinenko Case (Bunt. Delo Litvinenko) Andrey Nekrasov, Russia 2007, 105 min Disbelief (Nedoverie) Andrey Nekrasov, Russia 2004, 105 min Check screening times in the festival program on: www.kortfilmfestivalen.no | Rebellion: The Litvinenko case Alexander Litvinenko became worldknown when he was fatally poisoned in London last year. He was a former KGB agent under Putin, but left Russia shortly after holding a press conference accusing the Russian Secret Service of various wrong-doings. The films picks up on these accusations and takes them a lot lot further. Interviews with Litvinenko are the basis for many of the film’s arguments, accompanied by for example an interview with Anna Politkovskaya, and clandestine video footage of the police. Putin is accused of ordering the murders of opposition figures, laundering money, and generally creating an atmosphere of fear and oppression designed to crush opposition. This film pretends no objectivity, it goes out hard and urgently to present evidence against Putin’s Russia. Disbelief When Tatyana Morozova, a pre-school teacher in Milwaukee, learned that her mother had been killed and her old apartment block destroyed by an explosion back in Moscow, she believed the official version: that the attack was the work of Chechen terrorists. Then an American scholar published a book arguing that the bombing was engineered by the FSB, the Russian secret service, to help Vladimir Putin win the elections. Torn by grief and disbelief, Tatyana and her sister Alyona embark on a journey in space and time to seek the truth - followed by the camera of Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov. Filmed in Milwaukee, Moscow, Denver, Washington, London and the Ural Mountains, Disbelief chronicles the agony of a devastated family swept up in the high-stake politics of the age of global terrorism. Director Andrei Nekrasov was born in St. Petersburg. He studied at the St. Petersburg State Theatre Art Academy, L’Université Paris and Bristol University. He directed several documentaries and television programmes before making his first dramatic short, Springing Lenin (1993). His feature-length films include the fictional Love Is as Strong as Death (1997) and the documentaries Lubov and Other Nightmares (2000), Disbelief (2004) and Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case (2007). Sunday June 15: Special screening: 16:00: Rebellion - The Litvinenko Case 18:00: Discussion between Andrey Nekrasov and Åsne Sejerstad. |