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The 13th International Festival
Signes de Nuit
in Thailand
February 21-22 , 2015
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The Reading Room
Bangkok
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Program
(Experiental) Documentary
# 1 |
Saturday, February 21, 2015 / 3 pm
The Reading Room
Bangkok |
Elena
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Petra Costa
Brazil
2012 | 1:22:00
Elena moves to New York with the same dream her mother had: to become a movie actress. She leaves behind a childhood spent in hiding during Brazil’s military dictatorship and her teenage years amid theater plays and homemade videos. She also leaves behind Petra, her 7-year-old sister. Two decades later, Petra also becomes an actress and goes to New York in search of Elena. All she has are a few clues about her: home movies, newspaper clippings, diaries and letters. At any moment, Petra expects to find Elena walking in the streets. Gradually, the features of the two sisters are confused.
Elena is a film about the persistence of memories, the irreversibility of loss, the effects of her sister’s absence. Elena is also a film about the adventure of growing up. It is also the story of three women, which dialogues with themes such as family and maternity, pain and separation. |
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Voices of El Alto
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Voces de El Alto |
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Benjamin Oroza
Finland, South Africa
2013 | 0:49:00
A tent is pitched on the market square of El Alto, the Bolivian city perched 4,000 meters above sea level. The filmmakers ask random passersby to tell a personal story for the camera. The film opens with a young girl half giggling, half crying as she describes a very unpleasant experience. It seems that the impersonal camera has become the first confidant she has had for a long time. It's a confronting first scene, but at its core it's representative of what is to follow. The Finnish-Bolivian director Benjamin Oroza explains that this "story tent" – which he has been taking all over the world since 2009 – is a way of "making films with them, not about them. I want my films to convey a sense of us – while I remain silent and invisible." Oroza's sympathetic presence and the generosity of the passersby in sharing their personal experiences combine to create a sensitive collage of stories, a poignant and intimate insight into personal joy and sorrow. There's everything from an optimistic anecdote about a first kiss to a loudly declaimed mini-play about the native population's struggle for independence, along with accounts of runaway spouses, violent fathers, and the pain of being cast out by your own family.
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February 21 - 22, 2015
An international jury overview the sections of short films coming from all over the world. We prefer documentaries which succeed in representing the complexity of reality and discover in a new way its sensible and perturbing aspects on the same time accentuating the ambivalent and enigmatic status of reality in avoiding sterotypes and simplifing conclusions.
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