The Institute of Documentary Film will host a number of discussion workshops during the One World Festival. These workshops will enhance the film screenings and allow participants to meet the directors. In the case of the festival's Winning Hearts and Minds retrospective, the workshops will put the films in a historical context and will highlight each film's role in the development of cinematography as well as its place in the current global situation. Workshops with the directors will be facilitated by important figures in Czech documentary. This will directly involve the filmmakers in the discussion as well as providing commentary by film critic and theorists. The audience will also be encouraged to participate. Free admission.
VisionQuest: Vérité's Children
Discussion workshop, in which the legendary founders of Cinéma Vérité, Robert DREW and Richard LEACOCK, will participate.
Prior to the workshop the famous film Primary (USA, 1960, 58 min., Drew Associates Production, in English with translation to Czech) will be shown.
Entry fee: 60 CZK
Workshop: 6 pm, free admission.
Language: English, translation to Czech
Facilitator: Vít Janeček, CAS FAMU.
Friday 16 April / 5 pm - 7.30 pm / Ponrepo Cinema
Don't miss this workshop!
The 1950s saw the development of ideas by the Russian camera master Dziga Vertov and the birth of the Cinéma direct movement (later Cinéma Vérité). The improvement of the 16mm hand-held camera was crucial to this movement as it was able to synchronise the sound with the picture. An even more important element of this movement was the observation of the world around us and the recording of real situations as they happened, without the director's interventions or stylization. The father of the movement Jean Rouch started the anthropological documentary, within the framework of the Cinéma Vérité. He was concerned not only with foreign surroundings (for example his films set in Africa), but also with the observation of his own culture - contemporary France (Chronicle of a Summer, France 1961). The style developed from a non-intervention style to a sociological enquiry method, which became an important part of non-fiction film. It inspired filmmakers all over the world (in our country the most important were Evald Schorm, Emil Vachek, Jan Špáta) and led to the parallel stream -TV reporting.
This style spread throughout the USA and Canada. In the USA Robert Drew, Richard Leacock, the Maysles brothers and Don A. Pennebaker were some of the most important Cinéma Vérité filmmakers. They have made many timeless films, which overlap day-to-day banality with US history. The producer of the group Robert Drew used his journalist background and his prestige as a Life reporter to experiment with film footage based on the „candid still photography“ principle, used by Life magazine, and the Cinéma Vérité principle. It led to the birth of Direct Cinema and the first TV documentary series, made in this style in co-production with the ABC network. A lot of the legendary hourly documents from US society were made for this TV network, including the film Primary, which will be shown in conjunction with the workshop.
Primary
USA / 1960 / 58 min.
Two Democrat candidates, Hubert Humprey and John F. Kennedy, allowed Robert Drew to constantly film the most intense five days of the primary in the state of Wisconsin, which was an unprecedented idea in filmmaking at that time. Resulting material was gained from two parallel actions (the chief cameraman and cooperator was Richard Leacock), which was an intensive probe into the voting process, not only in public, but also in the private lives of the candidates. The result was not only a dramatic portrait of these two men, one of whom soon became the symbol of 1960's America, but a multifaceted film about the building and acknowledgement of political authority, its rise and downfalls. The intimacy of this film is unimaginable in today's world.
Biographic info:
Robert L. Drew (*1924 in Toledo, Ohio, USA), producer, filmmaker, holder of several prizes for the films he directed or produced, lives in New York.
Web: http://www.drewassociates.net
Richard Leacock (*1921 in London, Great Britain), director, cameraman, close co-worker of Robert Flaherty on several films, founder of the Documentary Faculty at MIT, holder of several prizes, lives in Paris and Brittany. He will attend with his partner and co-operator Valerie Lalonde.
Web: http://www.richardleacock.com
Patricio Guzmán: Exacting Eye of the Witness
Before meeting the legendary director Patricio Guzmán, we will screen his film The Pinochet Case (El caso Pinochet, 110 min., France, French and Spanish version with Engl subtitles, translation to Czech).
Screening: 7.30 pm, entry fee: 60 CZK
Workshop: 9.20 pm, free admission.
Language: Spanish, translation to Czech
Facilitator: Rodrigo Morales, KDT FAMU
Saturday 17 April / 7.30 pm / French Institute
Don't miss this workshop!
Patricio Guzmán studied film in Madrid. After returning to Chile in 1971, enthused by Allende's politics, he made a film First Year about the first 12 months of the Popular Front (UP) government. During this film's commercial distribution in Chile, Chris Marker saw it in the cinema and helped the film to be screened in Europe. Marker later initiated the making of Guzmán's next film The Battle of Chile. A right-wing revolution brought down Allende's government and started a long fascist dictatorship, which for Guzmán personally meant the end of filmmaking, his arrest and subsequent exile. It is no surprise that Guzmán went on to make a film about how the victims of Pinochet's regime helped bring the dictator to justice…
Patricio Guzmán's films The Battle of Chile and The Pinochet Case, which will screen at the One World Festival, are very personal testimonies to the history of Chile.
Guzmán's films will be introduced to the audience by Rodrigo Morales. He is a Czech director of South American origin, who now teaches in the Documentary Faculty of FAMU. He films mainly in countries where armed conflicts have taken place, most recently in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and Iraq. His films include The Visualization, The Mission, Gotov Is!, Away with the Dictator!.
Both Morales and Guzmán grew up in similar conditions in South America, both emigrated to Europe and both now film socio-political documentaries.
The Pinochet Case (El caso Pinochet)
France / 2001 / 110 min.
In 1998, during a visit to London, former Chilean dictator and senator-for-life Augusto Pinochet, who led the military coup against Salvador Allende in 1973 and presided over the darkest period of repression in Chilean history, was arrested by British police, becoming the first dictator to be brought before the international justice system since the Nuremberg trials. This fascinating film by acclaimed director Patricio Guzmán tracks the legal origins of the case against Pinochet in Spain, where a small group of dedicated lawyers and judges succeeded in bringing the general to trial, and also follows the workings of the British legal system and political reactions in Britain as the trial progresses. Crucial in the case against Pinochet were the testimonies of hundreds of victims of his brutal regime, most of them women. With great sensitivity, Guzmán movingly incorporates their unforgettable stories of torture and murder into the film. In The Pinochet Case, Guzmán creates a compelling look at the attempt to bring Pinochet to justice for these unspeakable crimes 25 years after he seized power. Though the British finally did allow the aging Pinochet to return home, he was stripped of his immunity to face prosecution in Chile and placed under house arrest. This powerful film stands as a testament to the efforts of those who worked to bring the brutal dictator to justice.
Tracking Down Nick Broomfield
Don't miss this workshop!
Nick Broomfield, one of the best known documentary filmmakers, author of the controversial films about the circumstances of Kurt Cobain's death, about the personality of Margaret Thatcher and the serial killer Aileen Wuornos, will participate in this discussion with Petr Bok and Martin Šmok, who are the authors of the docu-trilogy Among Blind Fools and the series Between a Star and a Crescent. The ethic of the documentary film is very important to the work of all three participants.
Free admission
Language: English, translating to Czech
Facilitators: Petr Bok and Martin Šmok, documentary filmmakers, VERA FILM
Sunday 18 April / 3.30 pm / Projection hall FAMU, Lažanský palace (I. floor)
Biographical info:
Nick Broomfield attended Essex and Cardiff Universities. Following studies in Law and Political Science, he went on to graduate studies at the National Film School. His body of works touches on subject matters as diverse as contemporary global culture and ranges from legalized prostitution in Nevada to Tracy Chapman's first performance in South Africa. His film credit includes Kurt & Courtney (1998), Fetishes (1996), Tracking Down Maggie: The Unofficial Biography of Margaret Thatcher (1994), The Leader, His Driver and the Driver's Wife (1991). His most recent films Biggie and Tupac (2002) and Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003), for which he was awarded the Amnesty International DOEN Award at the IDFA 2003, will be screened at the One World Festival.
Winning Hearts and Minds: Film and TV as the War Propaganda Instrument
Don't miss this workshop!
The festival's Winning Hearts and Minds retrospective will be complemented by the workshop Film and TV as the War Propaganda Instrument, lead by Dr. Martin Lokšík from the FSV UK. It focuses on the most important historical milestones and the best-known examples of the involvement of film and TV in war propaganda. During the workshop, extracts of films and TV programs from all over the world will be screened.
Free admission
Language: Czech
Facilitator: Dr. Martin Lokšík, Faculty of Social Science at Charles University (FSV UK)
Tuesday 20 April / 2.30 pm / Ponrepo Cinema
Winning Hearts and Minds
In cooperation with the National film archives we have prepared a retrospective of war propaganda films, which will be accompanied by debates and seminars. Along with Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda film, Triumph of Will, about the meeting of Hitler's NSDAP, there will be John Ford's short documentary, The Battle of Midway, which the director made at Roosevelt's request in 1942 for American mothers. Another film from American war propaganda from the time of the Second World War is Frank Capra's well-known series Why We Fight (The Battle of Britain), for American soldiers and filmed in cooperation with composers Alfred Newman and Dmitri Tiomkin. Animated maps from the films of Walt Disney will also be shown. From an entirely different point-of-view comes the famous film, In the Year of the Pig, with which director Emile de Antonio so angered Richard Nixon that he quickly found himself on a list of his enemies. Striking images from the Vietnam War, which include the well-known images of a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire, and a great soundtrack from John Cage helped to form this cult classic, whose style influenced Andy Warhol. It even received acclaim from American critics and was nominated for an Academy Award. An interesting view of the First World War is shown in the documentary, Heroic Cinematograph, which incorporates archival material and journal entries by a French and a German cameraman.
Institute of Documentary Film
Rytířská 18
110 00 Praha 1
Tel: +420 224214858
Mob: +420 604 788 752
Email: idf@docuinter.net
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