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Films - International Titles | ![]() |
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JOHANNESBURG SAT 15 2pm When exploring your parent’s past, beware what you might find! In this bittersweet investigation into his parent’s relationship, Doug Block dug deep and whilst reflecting on love, marriage and fidelity, found more than he expected. JOHANNESBURG SUN 16 8.30pm WED 19 6.45pm America prides itself on a Dream: anyone can attain greatness. But is this really true? Does an American ruling class exist, and if it does, how does one gain entry? Harper’s editor, Lewis Lapham, is intrigued. He sends two actors, posing as Ivy League graduates, out into the world to interview a high-calibre array of American leaders, from Hodding Carter III (Emmy award-winning journalist, Jimmy Carter spokesman) to Walter Cronkite, Robert Altman to James Baker III (Reagan’s Chief of Staff and Secretary of the Treasury). Through various songs and fascinating interviews with powerful men (and one woman) at the top of their game, this probing and provocative satire alters its initial course. The original question becomes one of ascertaining whether the ruling class has given in to blind ambition and if new entrants can ever hope to do well, or do good. JOHANNESBURG SUN 16 6pm TUE 18 8.30pm Danae, only child of respected Israeli-Jewish author Amos Elon, was raised by Musa Obeidallah, a Palestinian man. Everyday, determined to pay for the education of his eight sons in the States, Musa placed himself in danger crossing the barricades and curfews of Jerusalem to care for Danae. Now, still feeling emotionally attached to him, she wants to know how and where he is. Her mission starts in Patterson, New Jersey, where Musa’s sons now live. When she finds them, they have many difficult, discomforting questions for her before she can see their father again. In a conflict where every social interaction is informed and often deformed by politics, this tale of reconnection is a refreshing and affecting approach that transcends, and highlights, the Israeli-Palestine issue. JOHANNESBURG SAT 15 6pm WED 19 8.45pm Most people will have heard of Aceh as a place devastated during the Tsunami. But what they do not know is that Aceh and its warm-hearted, brave and resilient people have been engaged in a long struggle against the Indonesian army and government. This extraordinary and powerful film begins when journalist Nessen first arrives in Aceh and interviews General Yudhoyono (now, resident of Indonesia), who is trying to quell the dissidents. But Nessen decides he wants to balance both sides, and so he ventures into the bush, joining the rebels, meeting the villagers and insurgents on the way. As he becomes inexorably engrossed in the people and their cause, Nessen repeatedly places himself in personal danger to present the Acehnese conflict and the atrocities they continue to endure at the hands of the Indonesian government. JOHANNESBURG TUE 18 6.30pm SAT 22 8.30pm On the far eastern edge of the newly capitalist Russia, poachers and animals compete for resources in a vast forest wilderness. In the USSR there were jobs for all and less impact on the forest, but recent encounters between man and beast have escalated into violence and when the mauled body of a well-known poacher is found, all evidence points to him having been stalked by a massive, wounded tiger. The Conflict Tiger patrol steams in to investigate. This gripping and impressive documentary presents the views of the poachers, patrollers and the tiger, and in doing so, sympathetically portrays the life-threatening issues encountered by men and animals when forced to share the same space. It also shows a little seen, fascinating part of the world, and sheds light on the complex challenges faced by the environment and 21st-Century civilization. JOHANNESBURG SUN 16 2.30pm THU 20 6.45pm One day, a guy decides he wants to hold a party in the backyard. He’s gonna invite the neighbours, hire a sound system, get in some friends from out-of-town, get some others to play a few tunes, and maybe get a friend to film it. ‘Cept this ain’t just any guy. This is comedian David Chappelle, the backyard is Brooklyn, his friends are the Ohio Central State University marching band, Kanye West, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Common, Dead Prez, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, the Roots, Cody ChesnuTT, and Big Daddy Kane. Some other mates, The Fugees, get back together after seven years, ‘specially. There’re rehearsals before the gig, and then there’s the film-dude, who, it happens, is Oscar®-winning director Michel Gondry. It’s a celebration of comedy and music, history and community. It’s a party like you’ve never seen. JOHANNESBURG FRI 14 8.45pm TUE 18 8.30pm During the final death throes of apartheid, four photographers grouped together to document the township violence before South Africa’s first elections in 1994. Their fearless and reckless attitude soon earned them a reputation and the infamous moniker, The Bang Bang Club. International fame visited Kevin Carter, his celebrated picture of a starving child shadowed by a vulture in Sudan earned him a Pulitzer Prize. A few weeks later on the verge of witnessing a new South Africa, he committed suicide. Through interviews with friends, colleagues, family and his girlfriend, this Oscar®-nominated film sketches together his life and probable reasons for his death. It presents a brilliant but troubled young man whose professional choices caused him to party too hard, care too much, and become terrified of an ‘uneventful’ change in the status quo. JOHANNESBURG TUE 18 6.30pm SAT 22 8.30pm The Lotto is a global phenomenon who hasn’t played the Lotto? But in Naples, Italy, superstition is an integral part of daily life, and playing the numbers takes on a whole new prophetic dimension. This warm and captivating black and white film focuses its attention on one lotto shop that has been open over 100 years, and a transvestite bingo organiser. Punters come in every day to relate their dreams and consult the gentle women behind the counter and the ancient almanac that lists every ‘item’ in numerical form. Commonplace items include a father 81, a foot is 53, but the list is fantastic, accommodating the weirdest of dreams... This widely believed number theory interprets the past, explains dreams, predicts the future and ultimately might win that person a small fortune. JOHANNESBURG SUN 16 6.30pm SUN 23 7.45pm Named “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years, Enron’s downfall created a national scandal. This compelling film tells the complex tale of the prodigious rise and abrupt 2001 demise of the US’ seventh largest corporation in scrupulous detail. The Enron saga, lead by recently convicted media-darlings Lay and Skilling, reveals an immoral trail of predatory practices, inferred links to the Presidency and Arnie (California’s Governor), cooked books, and soaring stock prices that led to massive unemployment, a state energy crisis and national financial uncertainty. JOHANNESBURG FRI 14 8.30pm SAT 22 2.15pm In the 1970s, the omnipotent power of the Scillian Mafia, that had secretly driven Italian commerce and politics, began a grizzly campaign that held the people to ransom and destroyed rival bosses and detractors alike. In the 1980s and 90s two doggedly determined and audacious prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, fought through the system to bring the to justice. Millions of Italians watched stunned, as the organisation’s secrets, methodical murders and ‘disappearances’ were revealed, and hundreds of the Mafia’s most powerful men were convicted. But just as the prosecutors appeared to be victorious, politicians undermined their heroic efforts ultimately signing their death warrant. This absorbingly scrupulous film uses interviews, archival footage, and shocking news photos to chronicle the unwholesome relationship between the Mafia and the highest levels of politics in contemporary Italy. JOHANNESBURG SAT 15 4pm THU 20 8.45pm In Rio de Janerio the residents of the slumslive in a perpetual cycle of violence instigated by teenage gangs who wage war on other districts. In this powerful and inspirational story Anderson Sá, already immune to the night sounds of gun shots and screaming, was just 10 years old when he saw a man executed on the street of his notorious district of Vigário Geral. In 1993 when his brother, one of 21 innocent bystanders, was killed in an infamous retaliation raid by the police, Anderson decides that the fear and bloodshed must stop. Using his charisma to transformational effect, he challenges the violent status quo and spreads this alternative message through AfroReggae, an electric fusion of hip-hop, reggae and African-Brazilian music and dance. JOHANNESBURG SUN 16 8.15pm WED 19 6.30pm North Korea remains a political pariah. But is this just the result of a capitalist global media and American imperialism? The idealistic, young male members of the Korean Friends Association (KFA) led by Alejandro, a Spanish aristocratic think so. In 2004, for $1,500 per person, the KFA organised a Reunification March that promises a 12 day, magical mystery tour of the ‘real’ Korea. It begins with a PR junket, a much-publicised march down a deserted highway in protest of Korea’s continued separation, watched by 4,000 citizens. Juxtaposing idealism with reality, the film is alternately entertaining, disquieting and thought provoking. It reaches its zenith when invited ABC cameraman, Andrew Morse, offends Alejandro and has to sign an admission of guilt in order to be allowed to leave the country. JOHANNESBURG SUN 16 8pm SUN 23 6pm Within the fences of Guantanamo Bay nicknamed Gitmo 637 people have been held, suspected of terrorism. The filmmakers are interested in one, Mehdi Ghezali, a Swedish citizen. His father’s daily protests accuse the Americans of torture techniques that defy the Geneva Convention. The filmmakers decide to investigate and travel to Guantanamo. JOHANNESBURG SAT 15 8.45pm FRI 21 6.30pm This rambling, but no less enthralling history of the Glastonbury festival is a must-see for any modern music lover. In 1970 an unconventional young farmer, Michael Eavis, instigated a musical JOHANNESBURG SAT 15 8pm TUE 18 9pm Presenting an Iraq that you have not yet seen on the news, this illuminating film is separated into three portraits from the Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish communities. Each embodies vastly different reference points, religious beliefs, political aims and realities. JOHANNESBURG TUE 18 6.30pm SUN 23 6.30pm In 1969, TWA flight 840 was hijacked, the intention to broadcast the desperate plight of the Palestinian people. It was not only the unexpected act that created the media frenzy, but the beauty and sex of one of the hijackers. Overnight Palestinian Leila Khaled became a notorious revolutionary figure, the first woman hijacker and then, a year and a few face-disguising surgical procedures later, she did it again. Although as a child Makboul, a Palestinian-Swedish filmmaker, admired Khaled for the courage of her convictions, she found that adulthood brought more complex questions relating, not only to Palestinian terrorism but, to Khaled-the-myth and Khaled-the-reality. Twenty-five years after her notorious début, Makboul travels to Jordan to find a dignified, very human sixty-year old Khaled who lives an ordinary life with her husband and two sons. JOHANNESBURG WED 19 8.30pm SAT 22 6.30pm JOHANNESBURG TUE 18 6.45pm SUN 23 6.15pm
In New York, eleven-year-olds from all walks of life, communities and opportunities compete in the annual Schools Ballroom Dancing Competition. This uplifting and enchanting film, which will have you clapping and cheering, charts the first tentative and awkward dance steps of three disparate classes from Primary Schools hailing from trendy Tribeca, uptown drug-infested Washington Heights and Italian/Asian Brooklyn. With the competition looming ten weeks away, the classmates learn to rumba, meringue, tango, foxtrot, to swing and deport themselves with grace. Some of the kids are troubled and rebellious and it is a joy to see them claim the spotlight with such finesse, but the strength in this endearing film comes from its astute glimpse into the mind and aspirations of vital, straight-talking and engaging average New York kids on the verge of adolescence. JOHANNESBURG FRI 14 6.30pm SUN 23 8.30pm Her whole married life 75 year-old Marita has spent in the house her husband built. Set in her routine, feisty and religious, Marita’s house is the site of daily battles with rats, tea parties with her friends, endless hours watching TV and the place her favourite, charmingly precocious grand-daughter, Marina, comes to be reprimanded by her. Then, one day, Marita’s daughter informs her that her house has been sold to the developers. She has a few months to pack up and leave. The industrial backdrop of their town keenly conveys the emotional impact of Marita’s devastation, worry and loss. Beautifully constructed, layered and textured, touching on family, tradition and home, this film is an intimate and tender portrayal. JOHANNESBURG FRI 14 6.45pm MON 17 8.45pm JOHANNESBURG MON 17 6.30pm SAT 22 4.30pm Across Europe food production marches on, day and night in a clinically efficient, relentlessly mechanised process that provides fresh tomatoes, steak, milk and olives. People, animals, and crops become cogs in the working wheels of massive machines that range from combine harvesters to olive tree shakers, robotic spraying devices to rotating milking centres, cutters to conveyor belts, and salt diggers to fish vacuums. Without commentary this elegiac film is sometimes horrifying, occasionally comical but always fascinating, and presents questions about the impact on the environment, and the nature of the food we eat. Beautifully framed, each surreal, muted, and mesmerising scene represents a rhythmic, clinical, apocalyptic vision that is entirely divorced from the Farmer Brown of our imaginations. Screens with Johnny Appels The Last Strandloper Flamboyantly swathed in a fuchsia feather boa, John ain’t your typical farmer. Yet John Peterson is exactly that in love with the land and its way of life. John inherited his farm at a fairly young age, and while working it, went to college where he fell in love with art and self-expression, picked up a few ideas about life, and earned the censure of his community, which spread rumours of Satanism, sex-orgies and animal sacrifices. Irreverent and determined, Farmer John has experienced the highs and lows of America’s mid-western farming industry. He’s had to sell land to the banks, was shunned by all, and at the end of his tether risked everything on organic produce and, finally, won. His curious and heartfelt story charts the consequences of an unconventional approach to life. JOHANNESBURG SUN 16 4pm WED 19 8.45pm When Saddam Hussein was captured, the world wondered what would happen next. While we waited, Jean-Pierre Krief traversed Iraq, Jordan, Spain, France and the US, meeting up with legal experts, members of the Iraqi Special Court (ISC), Saddam Hussein’s defence team and Hussein’s victims. His mission: to determine whether, given the present situation in Iraq, the country’s former President will receive a fairer trial than any he gave his people, party or even family members. Beginning with grainy footage of the ‘trail’ and subsequent execution of 21 Ba’ath Party members in 1979, this complex, but enlightening investigation winds a fairly impartial course, letting the personal accounts and facts speak for themselves, to offer a fresh look at Saddam, and his old allies (now new enemies) who indirectly colluded in past atrocities. JOHANNESBURG FRI 14 8.45pm FRI 21 8.30pm In Iraq, there is a private army of 20,000 that are referred to as ‘private security contractors’ and which outnumber the combined non-US coalition ground forces. In the last century, these mercenaries were deployed as tactical interference in dodgy African states. After 9/11 the mercenary industry boomed and now highly-trained, professional outfits compete with gung-ho ones that were formed to fulfil the lucrative demands in Iraq where, accountable to no nation or court, they are a law unto themselves. In this insightful, explicit and balanced documentary, these dogs of war come under the spotlight. The filmmakers interview lucid, likeable professional ‘soldiers of fortune’, several ‘consultants’ in Iraq, historical experts, authors, political strategist and the creator of the A-Team to understand where these guys come from, what they do, why they do it. JOHANNESBURG SUN 16 2pm THU 20 8.30pm
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