 |
|
 |
The 12th International Festival
Signes de Nuit
in Thailand
February 21-22 , 2015
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Awards
Short Film and Documentary
Sections
|
|
|
|
*
THE MAIN AWARD
* |
| |
|
|
Manel Raga
Spain
2013 | 0:15:00
A child who is not a child anymore, a mother who is gone forever and a father who never stops to possessing her, beyond life. The Hen is a desire that persists over time, it is a devastating routine that gets sick until become death.
|
|
|
Jury Declaration:
A poetic short film by Manel Raga, is a remarkably timeless tale of family tragedy eloquently narrated through rich symbolism, at the center of which is the eponymous Hen. Masterfully rooted in cinematic tradition, the film seamlessly interweaves surrealism, neorealism, and silent black and white classic movie with dark humor and allegorical parable. The most brilliant and unsettling aspect of the film is the portrayal of monstrous power of possession and obsession that unravels each character into anthropomorphic personification before our eyes. Ultimately “The Hen” is a tale as delightful and dark as the original Grimm’s fairy tales - the tales that are not morally didactic or happily-ever-after but rather ambiguous and existential as life itself.
|
Director's Comment:
I really would like say big thanks for this Asia Award. It's really special for all the people of The Hen to hear from the jury these words, because we can find in them a lot of the things that moved us to make this film. And I also would like to say thanks to the festival to give the chance for the filmmakers to show around different places of the world a very radical films, full of passion, poetry and risk. I think that gives a lot of hope for the future of cinema. I would like to share this award to all the crew of the short film but also with all the people that are studying with me in Film Factory of Sarajevo, for their support on the way to try to make more films. Big, big thanks again! |
*
THE SIGNS AWARD
* |
The Signs Award is attributed to films treating an important subject in an original, convincing and surprising way.
* |
|
|
Simon Gillard
Belgium
2013 | 0:20:00
Yaar, in the heart of the bush where the gravel is hollowed, a stubborn civilisation hunts out its future below the earth's surface. Blind, or perhaps all too seeing, they dig away, night and day, spurred on by the madness that drives man to his death.
|
|
|
Jury Declaration:
Without any dialogue, Burkinese gold-diggers’ lives are astonishingly captivated by Simon Gillard. From dangers and darkness underground, to never-ending digging, to rhythmic sand winnowing, to the tranquility while brewing coffee, the film explores their lives through lights, shadows and movements. Yaar brings us an experience full of beauty and sensitivity, accredited to the filmmaker’s sharp gaze, which makes us sense more than how miserable their lives are, but also the relationship between them and the land.*
|
|
*
THE NIGHT AWARD
* |
The Night Award honours films, which are able to balance ambiguity and complexity characterised by enigmatic mysteriousness and subtleness, which keeps mind and consideration moving. |
*
The Shadow's Share
* |
La part de l'ombre |
|
|
Olivier Smolders
Belgium
2014 | 0:28:00
On 7 February 1944, the opening day of a large exhibition of his work, young, Hungarian photographer Oskar Benedek disappears. More than 60 years later, an investigation uncovers his strange fate.
|
|
|
Jury Declaration:
A bizarre and mesmerizing portrayal of an obscure, mysteriously vanished photographer, The Shadow’s Share offers audiences a chance to glimpse through the world orbiting around a pseudo-artist, Oskar Benedek, his works and his obsession. Smolder takes us deep into the perverted history of the counterfeit artist. Gradually unfolding and interweaving his oeuvres with the social context (especially Nazi medical experiment), the film’s main strength lies in its display of Benedek’s gracefully grotesque photos of human deformities, yet the display doesn’t aim to scare away audiences, on the contrary, these photos lure us willingly into a beautiful nightmare. A nightmare that only cinema could provide.
* |
|
|
*
MENTION FOR THE NIGHT AWARD
* |
The Night Award honours films, which are able to balance ambiguity and complexity characterised by enigmatic mysteriousness and subtleness, which keeps mind and consideration moving.
* |
*
Seven Times a day we bemoan our lot and at night we get up to avoid dreaming
* |
Sieben Mal am Tag beklagen wir unser Los und Nachts stehen wir auf um nicht zu träumen |
|
|
Susann Maria Hempel
Germany
2014 | 0:18:00
A cinematic devotional book. Based on interviews with an unemployable sufferer (and his fellows), living in the East German countryside, who lost his memory in 1989 and woke up into several nightmares.
|
|
|
Jury Declaration:
This Susann Maria Hempel’s film stands out wonderfully with creativity and originality. The passages from the interview with a man who lived in 1989 East Germany combined beautifully with animated miniatures, text banners and ornaments. Despite horror and disturbing elements within fairytales or prayer books style, Hempel successfully visualizes the man’s pain and nightmares right before our eyes. Moreover, it’s not only the man’s, but also the pain and nightmares of a nation
|
Director's Comment:
Im Deutschen gibt es ein altes Wort für den Albtraum, da steckt noch die Tages- bzw. Nachtzeit drin, in der die bösen Träume ihren Auftritt haben: „Nachtmahr“, ganz nah am englischen „nightmare“. Wenn „Sieben Mal am Tag…“ so albtraumhaft daherkommt, dann ja leider nur deshalb, weil nichts davon geträumt ist - d.h., meine eigenen Albträume sind ein Witz im Vergleich zu der Verstümmelungsgeschichte eines Menschen, der ja kaum anders kann, als sich innerhalb seiner eigenen Normalität zu bewegen. Die Tage sind deshalb verheerender als die Nächte, weil sie uns vorführen, wie „daneben“ wir sind, der Welt ganz abhanden gekommen. Wenn es aber dunkel wird, hocken wir uns zusammen und fangen mit dem Sprechen an: damit es heller wird, mindestens! (... der Glühwürmchen-Code: drei mal kurz, drei mal lang, drei mal kurz = S.O.S.)
In the German language there is an old word for nightmare (Alptraum), evoking the day- and nighttimes, in which even dreams coming up, near to the English "nightmare". If "Sieben Mal am Tag…" seems to be like a nightmare, then only, because nothing in it is dreamed, this means, my own nightmares are just a joke in comparison to this history of concision of a human being, who can't do anything else as to act in his own normality. The days therefore are more devastating as the nights, because they show us, how far out we are, lost for the rest of the world. But when it gets dark, we squatting together and start to speak: that more lightness appears, at least! (the code of the glow-worm, three times short, three times long, three times short = S. O. S.)
|
*
THE MAIN AWARD
* |
| |
*
For the Lost
* |
Les Tourmentes |
|
|
Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd
Belgium, France
2014 | 1:17:00
On the plateau of Mont Lozère, a sequence of strange images unfolds. Herds of sheep in winter are accompanied by a mysterious figure. Menhirs tower skywards. Savage nature imposes silence. The voices withdraw into themselves, becoming inaudible. A visionary and mystical film that evokes the compassion of the world.
|
|
|
Jury Declaration:
For the Lost is a documentary which does not only take the spectators on a journey of looking or only force the spectators to face the moral dilemma via the conversation, but it also uses the images that the sheep see as a road into the minds of psychiatric patients who were imprisoned, shepherded, represented by a number, tortured, and also suffered behind a stone wall of a mental hospital. We saw the cruel, open landscape as a limited space in the hospital. We heard the sound of storm as a quiet scream of them. This is the way to portray a picture of mind without using any words.
* |
Director's Comment:
|
*
THE SIGNS AWARD
* |
The Signs Award for Documentary honors films, which express in a surprising way sensible and perturbing aspects of reality. |
*
Voices of El Alto
* |
Voces de El Alto |
|
|
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. |
|
|
Jury Declaration:
VOICES OF EL ALTO makes us wonder how the filmmaker can make all these strangers bare their hearts and souls in front of the camera. This is not the thing we often see when a filmmaker interviews any strangers. This is one of the great achievements of this film. The film also shows us the true faces and voices of ordinary people in a distant part of the world, and shows us how each of these ordinary people have his/her own fascinating stories to tell. Some of the stories are very disturbing, while some are very hopeful. All of these stories inspire each viewer to create “the images of the story” in his/her own head. This is the kind of technique which may sound very simple, but in fact is very effective and very liberating for the viewers. The film also encourages each viewer to create some special meanings out of these stories by using parallel editing between some stories and by the juxtaposition of a story after another story.
* |
Directors Statement:
Thank you so much for giving Voices of El Alto a chance to be seen here in
Signes de Nuit, Thailand. This festival has a very special meaning for me
because it fulfills two things that I most value. The first is that here
Voices of El Alto can be appreciated as a stand alone work of documentary
art. The second is that the protagonists of Voices of El Alto are
appreciated as an end in themselves (and not just as a human ornaments
reduced into puppets at service of illustrating a vision or mission
totally apart from their true personality, reality, moral and ethical
values, dreams and wishes). The audience award is the best proof that here
in Bangkok, the protagonists could communicate directly with you. Thank
you so much for letting this miracle happen. |
*
THE NIGHT AWARD
* |
The Night Award for Documentary honors films, which represent reality in an ambivalent and enigmatic way, avoiding stereotypes of representation and simple conclusions.
* |
|
|
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. |
|
|
Jury Declaration:
Though many documentarians have made films about their own families, rarely has one made such a complex, fascinating, beguiling, and heartbreaking film as ELENA. This therapeutic film presents the tragedy in the filmmaker’s own family in a very unique way. The filmmaker acted first as a detective, searching for her long lost elder sister, before the truth is revealed later in the film. This is a kind of technique which we rarely have seen before in a documentary. The combination between fiction and reality, the use of old home video footages and letters, the highly poetic quality of the film, the painful truth it reveals, the presence of the filmmaker’s mother on the screen—all of these are the things which also make this sorrowful documentary such an unforgettable film.
* |
|
*
MENTION FOR THE THE NIGHT AWARD
* |
The Night Award for Documentary honors films, which represent reality in an ambivalent and enigmatic way, avoiding stereotypes of representation and simple conclusions.
* |
*
The Green Serpent - of Vodka, Men and Distilled Dreams
* |
|
|
|
Benny Jaberg
Switzerland, Russia
2013 | 0:20:33
The Green Serpent takes us on a journey into the depths of intoxication: drinking vodka as a transcendental experience. Bitten by the green snake, people enter a twilight zone. The beauty of life becomes indistinguishable from a devastating void where inspiration and destruction equally form. During this cinematic anti-postcard trip through the Russian winterland, we meet the actor Aleksandr Bashirov, the poet Mstislav Biserov and the physicist Nikolai Budnev. They reveal their relationship with vodka; the inner struggles and the pursuit of divine spirits awakened by drinking. This brusque Cinepoem explores the potential of vodka to extend the world beyond religion and materialism. THE GREEN SERPENT is a meditation on drinking, an ode to passion not only for inebriated barflies, but for everyone driven by a sense of wonder and a desire for ecstasy. |
|
|
Jury Declaration:
Benny Jaberg’s “The Green Serpent: Of Vodka, Men and Distilled Dreams” is a unique portrayal of intoxication through series of interview with three Russian men - an actor, a poet and a physicist - who reveal a fantastic emotional rollercoaster that alcohol precipitates, from experiencing cathartic compassion towards humanity to sudden impulse to see violent obliteration of human race. The film cleverly juxtaposes interview footage with otherworldly cosmic shots that extend beyond reality into the realm of metaphysical, magical and existential as if to suggest that the state of inebriating can bring human being closer to the essence of the universe, which, inevitably, is an infinite nothingness. The Green Serpent is essentially a wonderfully sympathetic depiction of addiction, human vulnerability, and a doomed pursuit of happiness.
*
|
| |
*
THE EDWARD SNOWDEN AWARD
* |
The Edward Snowden Award honors films, which offer sensible (mostly) unknown informations, facts and phenomenons of eminent importance, for which the festival wishes a wide proliferation in the future.
* |
|
|
Yotam Feldman
Israel, France, Belgique
2013 | 0:58:00
In the past decade, the Israeli military control over 3.75 million Palestinians has become an economic endeavour that is considered the key element to the Israeli wealth. The means used by the military against Gaza and in the West Bank are exported worldwide. The film shows how the military occupation is a national business enterprise so valuable that the State of Israel cannot afford to lose.
Yotam Feldman: the Israeli economy has become dependent on the massive security market. Governments act in hypocrisy when they purchase Israeli arms used against Palestinians, but criticize Israeli violence.
|
|
|
Jury Declaration:
With the use of operating images and headshot interviews, this investigative documentary may look at first like a news scoop. However, this film is much more than that. It sardonically reveals an important fact about a nation –the fact that its economical rise comes from the weapon industries which use its homeland war as a laboratory and a guarantee of the quality of the weapons they made. Apart from the religion and ethnic aspects, this film opens a new way to explain this unfinished war through the eye of economy, and tells us that nearly every nation, even a peaceful one, is a part of this crime. With the courage of the film crew who follows lots of people in the military, films them and interviews them, these people unintentionally reveal their attitudes on killing people, making war without any guilt, and how this kind of feeling is important to drive the country to its economic success . While watching this, we realize that the more we laugh, the more we are deeply hurt, because we know the tragic-comical truth that every peace talk was held by war.
|
| |
| |
| |
|
|
Yotam Feldman
Israel, France, Belgique
2013 | 0:58:00
In the past decade, the Israeli military control over 3.75 million Palestinians has become an economic endeavour that is considered the key element to the Israeli wealth. The means used by the military against Gaza and in the West Bank are exported worldwide. The film shows how the military occupation is a national business enterprise so valuable that the State of Israel cannot afford to lose.
Yotam Feldman: the Israeli economy has become dependent on the massive security market. Governments act in hypocrisy when they purchase Israeli arms used against Palestinians, but criticize Israeli violence.
|
|
|
| |
| |
| |
|
*
The Shadow's Share
* |
La part de l'ombre |
|
|
Olivier Smolders
Belgium
2014 | 0:28:00
On 7 February 1944, the opening day of a large exhibition of his work, young, Hungarian photographer Oskar Benedek disappears. More than 60 years later, an investigation uncovers his strange fate.
|
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
*
Voices of El Alto
* |
Voces de El Alto |
|
|
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. |
|
|
| |
|
|
