Florence 13rd - 20th November 2010

International documentary film festival

  • ...E INVECE ERA UNA VOLPE

    Italy 2010 19'
    Directed by: Alessandra Locatelli
    Sloping roofs, steep tiny paved alleys, a fountain, a dairy, a churchyard, a small travelling circus, and all around the high peaks covered in snow. The life of a tiny mountain village is caught in the slow passing of time, among children playing soccer in the small square, women praying, old loners and homesick immigrants. Cinema takes shape as a scrutiny and an encounter with the world.

    2010 Wednesday 17th November, Odeon, 3:00 pm - Saturday 20th Novembre, Spazio Uno, 3:00 pm

  • AMANAR TAMASHEQ

    Spain/Mali 2010 14'
    Directed by: Lluís Escartín
    Dressed in typical Tuareg attire, a man sits in the director's room. His face must remain hidden, his voice can’t be heard; what he’s about to say would put him in grave danger. The agony of the Tuareg people is suffered in silence, ignored by both the media and the international community. This fiery plea for help is addressed to a camera, like a message in a bottle, with the hope that it will travel the distance to reach us.

    2010 Tuesday 16th Novembre, Odeon, 9:30 pm - Wednesday 17th November, Spazio Uno, 7:00 pm

  • BLUE SKY. DARK BREAD

    Russia 2010 21'
    Directed by: Ilya Tomashevich
    Somewhere in Russia, during the wheat harvest. As if suspended in time, people repeat the same, age-old movements, to the score of a powerful, ancestral musicality. Poised in the air, the camera sweeps down to earth, ecstatic and inspired, noting each gesture with solemnity. Labor is transformed into an epic poem celebrating the earth and the fruits it generously produces.

    2010 Wednesday 17th November, Odeon, 3:00 pm - Thursday 18th November, Spazio Uno, 10:00 am

  • COTONOV VANISHED

    Switzerland 2009
    Directed by: Andreas Fontana
    A brilliant, promising interpreter, the Russian Cotonov has a sudden breakdown during a Geneva summit with Gorbachev and Reagan. Then he vanishes. Out of this scant material, Andreas Fontana builds a detective story in which the solution is never given, yet various evidence is put forward. At the story’s center lies the unsolved mystery of Cotonov, the very image of instability over an abyss, as are all forms of communication.

    2010 Friday 19th November, Odeon, 5:15 pm - Saturday 20th November, Spazio Uno, 10:30 am

  • GREEK SALAD

    France 2010 24'
    Directed by: Jean-Claude Taki
    A downpour of words (including the writing of Deleuze and Daney) flits across astonishing, never before seen images on the screen: one tells stories while the other jumps back and forth in time. Each story and each image has to do with the cinema, its dreams, its utopias. These elements provide the architecture of a fascinating monument in which the memory of the 20th Century and cinema become one.

    2010 Tuesday 16th November, Odeon, 5:00 pm - Wednesday 17th November, Spazio Uno, 10:30 am

  • HOLDING STILL

    Germany 2010
    Directed by: Florian Riegel
    This is the story of Janis Sawyer, a woman whose life has been marked by suffering and indescribable tragedy. Yet Janis, in her sweet, serene voice, tells the secret of her life. Seaside has never seen Janis’s face; rather than go outside, she prefers using a surveillance camera connected to her computer because “If you hold still long enough, and observe a little bit, everything comes to you.”

    2010 Wednesday 17th November, Odeon, 3:00 pm - Saturday 20th November, Spazio Uno, 10:30 am

  • INWENTARYZACJA
    Inventory

    Poland 2010 9'
    Directed by: Pawel Lozinski
    In a limbic, mysterious place, like a silent forest, some men remark on the traces of the past: ancient graves whose illegible names still try to commemorate the past. This film concentrates on the gestures and attentions of those who, against all odds, desire to bring to light the names of forgotten men and women in an ancient Jewish cemetery, immersed in a time out of time, indifferent to the frenetic movement of modern life.

    2010 Thursday 18th November, Odeon, 3:00 pm - Saturday 20th November, Spazio Uno, 10:30 am

  • IRMA

    USA/Mexico 2010 13'
    Directed by: Charles Fairbanks
    Irma is an old «luchadora» (female wrestler) who bears the marks of a life spent battling in the ring, performing daredevil moves. Every day she goes to the gym to rehearse the moves that made her a star. Children watch her curiously. Somewhere in the distance, a song plays: Irma was once a singer, too. In her memory, grainy images of old television clips flicker.

    2010 Monday 15th November, Odeon, 9:30 pm - Tuesday 16th November, Spazio Uno, 10:30 am

  • LOVELY PLANET

    Netherlands 2010 9'
    Directed by: Ton Van Zantvoort
    Lovely Planet is a film about travelers’ bulimia, the feverish activity of crisscrossing the world in search of present fragments with which to make memories. Impressions overlap, the beat picks up, bits of experience flit across the screen, making the film a real «trip» that ends in a flash: it’s not time, but we – tourists of this Lovely Planet – who pass by inexorably.

    2010 Thursday 18th November, Odeon, 9:30 pm - Friday 19th November, Spazio Uno, 10:30 am

  • MAYE ET FILS
    Maye and Son

    Switzerland 2010 17'
    Directed by: David Maye
    From father to son. The Mayes are a family of wine producers in Valais (Switzerland) based on a solid tradition of male descent. The occasion of the old Simon’s hospitalization becomes an opportunity for Jean-François to communicate with his father. Another member of the Maye family, the youngest one, follows this relationship with discretion and affection. A film about family and a relationship reminiscent of old biblical passages, "Maye et fils" is a joyful digression on memory, transmission and the meaning of life.

    2010 Monday 15th November, Odeon, 7:00 pm - Tuesday 16th November, Spazio Uno, 10:30 am

  • MILLTOWN MONTANA

    Germany 2009 33'
    Directed by: Rainer Komers
    Montana is Big Sky Country. Casting about in a seemingly detached manner, the camera actually weaves together what makes life tick in Montana. From coal mines to bars where people meet at night, the film creates a silent portrait of society, pairing the rhythms of industry with those of people’s ordinary, ritualistic lives.

    2010 Thursday 18th November, Odeon, 3:00 pm - Friday 19th November, Spazio Uno, 10:30 am

  • O ESTRANGEIRO
    The Foreigner

    Portugal 210 18'
    Directed by: Ivo M. Ferreira
    A man walks the streets of a city in search of a friend who, perhaps, once lived there. But the search for the other is always a search for oneself, and every search for oneself is, at bottom, destined to remain unresolved. A hypnotic film about the subjective desire to reach (or maybe only seek out) what is both familiar and strange to us. A unique, subtle depiction of a meeting between a scrutinizer and the city he scrutinizes.

    2010 Thursday 18th November, Odeon, 3:00 pm - Friday 19th November, Spazio Uno, 10:30 am

  • SAFAR-E-SABZ (VIAGGIO VERDE)
    Safar-e-Sabz (Green Journey)

    Italy/Turkey/Iran 2010 29'
    Directed by: Linda Dorigo
    Departing Tehran for Istanbul on board the TransAsia Express, a young Iranian describes his country through sensations and memories. Outside are the green meadows of the north, inside the greenery of hope, elsewhere the green protest movement. "Safar-e-sabz" alternates narrative and poetry, past and present, the description of a country in the midst of change and a past full of emotion. In between, there’s the hope of getting there.

    2010 Wednesday 17th November, Odeon, 9:30 pm - Thursday 19th November, Spazio Uno, 10:30 am

  • SI YO FUERA TÚ, ME GUSTARÍAN LOS CICATRIZ
    If I were you, I'd dig Cicatriz

    Spain 2010 23'
    Directed by: Jorge Tur Molto
    Myths of the recent past: in the early Eighties, the punk band Cicatriz exploded on the Basque music scene with their socially and existentially angst-ridden songs and behavior that quickly earned them the name «nasty dudes». Pounding the pavement in Vitoria, the film searches for traces of these quickly burnt out stars and a period now lost, when crowds once thronged the concerts and songs were named after the most brazen girls.

    2010 Thursday 18th November, Odeon, 7:00 pm - Friday 19th November, Spazio Uno, 3:00 pm

  • SUR LES PAVES, L'ALTAÏ
    The AltaÏ on the Pavement

    France 2010 30'
    Directed by: Luc Bellon
    Around clubs and public squares of Paris a band of Mongolian musicians enthrals the audience with the incredible range of their two-tone singing, fascinating both the idles and tourists and the more refined spectators of nightclubs. In-between two concerts the members of the band gather in their flat and in circle commemorate their far away land, like in the steppe. A cinema of observations trying to catch the nomadic essence of the characters.

    2010 Sunday 14th November, Odeon, 7:00 pm - Monday 15th November, Spazio Uno, 10:30 am

  • THE DARKNESS OF DAY

    USA 2009 26'
    Directed by: Jay Rosenblatt
    Made exclusively from excerpts of 16mm films, The Darkness of Day contemplates the effects suicide has on those who go on living. Off screen, a voice reads diary snippets, splicing them with stories of lives interrupted. Jay Rosenblatt, found footage cinema connoisseur, creates a visual essay on the vertigo of absence and solitude, a powerful elegy that gives voice to that which cannot be spoken or filmed.

    2010 Thursday 18th November, Odeon, 3:00 pm - Friday 19th November, Spazio Uno, 5:00 pm

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