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The Main Award
Documentary (over 45 min)
Silent Chaos
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Jury Declaration |
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For the beauty and the sincerity of its philosophical and plastic
approach of the tragic events that occured in Congo.
* |
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Antonio Spano
Italy, Democratic Republic of Congo
2012 | 0:45:00
North Kivu, Democratic Republic Of Congo. After a bloody civil war that lasted for years,
Congolese society has lost its identity. However, archaic superstitions and magical beliefs
are the only elements left which still bring the population together. These forces guide the
defense of the territory led by Mai-Mai rebels, but they also make people consider those
who are different as a threat, just like what happens to the deaf in Butembo. This is the
story of those who have no voice and no hope, but who keep struggling for their own d
ignity, not willing to resign to unhappiness.
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Directors Statement:
What a magnificent way to get up in a Sunday morning! What can I say? It's an unexpected surprise! I want to thank the Jury, people who came to live this Festival and of course Dieter and all the whole Festival Staff. For me this award, in such important city as Paris, it's a big injection of strenght and confidence to keep continuing to go what makes me happy: to tell hidden stories. |
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The Signs Award
Documentary (over 45 min)
The Road : a story of life and death
*
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Jury Declaration |
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The Signs Award for Documentary honors films, which express in a
surprising way sensible and perturbing aspects of reality.
* |
*
For the filmmaker’s ability to depict not only the complexities
of the migration phenomenon but above all for the honest and
beatiful portrait of each one of the characters.
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Marc Issacs
Great Britain
2012 | 1:15:00
The road in Marc Isaacs's highly engagingdocumentary is the A5, the 300-mile Roman
legacy connecting Holyhead to Marble Arch. Isaacs installed his camera at various points
to record its many travellers: marching Muslims, Buddhist monks seeking nirvana in
Colindale, an alcoholic ex-navvy, whose loneliness is horribly compelling and rarely
observed this honestly. As proposed by his 2001 doc Lift – which sought out characters
in a tower block – Isaacs may be British cinema's pre-eminent people person, locating
strangeness, melancholy and joy in the urban landscape, and those who inhabit it. Almost
every subject might have merited their own film, but the brisk diversity is central to what
emerges as a subtly pointed, humorous and, above all, humane contribution to the
immigration debate: the road has been retraced as a lifeline, pumping fresh blood into
the city's heart.
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The Night Award
Documentary (over 45 min)
Snake Dance
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Jury Declaration |
The Night Award for Documentary honors films, which
represent reality in an ambivalent and enigmatic way,
avoiding stereotypes of representation and simple conclusions. |
For its creative contribution to the comprehension
of the phenomenon with the greatest impact in the
Twentieth century - the invention and the use of the
atomic bombe. |
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Manu Riche, Patrick Manham
Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland
2012 | 1:17:00
Snake Dance, the new film by the Belgian documentary-maker Manu Riche
and the English-Irish writer and scenarist Patrick Marnham, is about the genesis
of the atomic bomb. The journey leading up to this story was a long one.
We plunge into the jungle of the Congo in the footsteps of Leopold II in
search of the place where uranium is mined. We cross the ocean to Los Alamos,
the base in New Mexico where Robert J. Oppenheimer developed the atom bomb
assisted by the best physicists in the world. We follow the bomb to Japan, where
it destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Riche and Marnham introduce a second thread into their film, that of the German
art historian and anthropologist Aby Warburg (1866-1929). Warburg was the first
to demonstrate the importance of iconography -- a history in images -- in the study
of civilisations and cultures. For instance, he studied the religious symbolism of
the Pueblo Indians and more specifically the Hopi tribe, who lived very near the
place where the Los Alamos camp was built. In 1923, the visionary Warburg wrote:
'What interested me as a cultural historian was that in the midst of a country that had
made technological culture into an admirable precision weapon in the hands of intellectual
man, an enclave or primitive pagan humanity was able to maintain itself.' Snake Dance is
about the choices modern man has to make if he wants to survive. Like Prometheus, he
makes fatal decisions that leave him alone in a world of chaos.
Extrait:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVq9sI10S8A
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Main Award
Documentary (up to 45 min)
Venomous Foids (Vishaparvam)
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Jury Declaration |
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*
This film shows the still existing capacities of communication
with the unknown of the nature and with the inner levels of
reality. The Snake cycle.
* |
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Vipin Vijay
India
2013 | 0:30:00
A video essay that looks into the contemporary simulation of the old relationship
between sign and referent. A toxicologist, a convict, a herpetologist, a traditional
healer ponder deeply to get closer to the reality of things.
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Directors Statement:
It is gratifying to see that one’s work has made some connect with people who have watched it. I thank one and all for the support and patronage. Personally
it is important for me, at least, to imagine the emotional prospect of life around me with full blown disbelief, so as to see the edge of it…
I was attracted to Ayurveda’s Toxicology branch, the science of poisons, which initiated me to make this documentary. This led to knowing many individuated
notions of a living tradition, and the process was in itself attuning to time and space in a peculiar mode. To engage with this creation of divergence that occurs
in an unfamiliar chronicle of time, that’s the chance, this documentary offered.
Thank you so much.
Regards from India
Vipin |
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