This year again our audience can look forward to a range of documentaries, ambitious works by directors from various countries such as Nicaragua, Iran and Austria.
CITY WALLS: my own private Teheran by Asfar Sonia Shafie documents the life stories of women who talk about their past as young wives and mothers and how they coped with raising their families in a strictly traditional, male dominated society. ROSITA by Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater is an important contribution about the case of young Rosita who after being raped becomes pregnant and is forced by the church to have the baby. DIE FRAU, DIE ARBEIT, DIE KUNST UND DAS GELD - Austrian SI.SI.Klocker researches the living and work strategies of women that have creative and artistic jobs.
With KURZ DAVOR IST ES PASSIERT award winner Anja Salomonowitz has taken a unique approach about the topic of the trafficking of women, telling their stories through the film’s protagonists.
GV/EV - german/english version
ogs/oes - original with german/english subtitles
Afsar Sonia Shafie, Iran/Switzerland 2006,
documentary, 87 min., color, Beta SP, oes
Having lived most of her adult life in the ‚western world’ 38 year old filmmaker Afsar Sonia Shafie returns to her homeland Iran where she reunites with her family. By interviewing her mother, she finds out a great deal about her elders’ past in relation to her own. Amazingly reflective Shafie gives an insight into social structures and manages to give a brief overview of the political background of Iran since the 1970ies. She states and points out options and perspectives while never failing to research her topic thoroughly.
Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater,
Nicaragua/Costa Rica/USA 2005,
documentary, 56min., DVD, oes
In January 2003, news spreads throughout Central and South America that a 9-year-old Nicaraguan girl has become pregnant as the result of a rape. Rosa, or Rosita as the girl becomes known in the press, is the only child of illiterate campesinos working in Costa Rica as coffee pickers at the time of the assault. Fearing for their daughter's life and mental health, Rosa's parents are determined to obtain an abortion for their child.
The film was awarded amongst others at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival (New York), >Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, Latin American Film Festival (London) and Women's Film Festival (Vermont).
Luiz de Barros, Andile Genge, South Africa 2004,
documentary, 39 min., DVD, EV
Meet an ordinary family of extraordinary people (plus six dogs and four cats). Two Moms is an intimate profile of two exceptional women and their unique family. This 39-minute, acclaimed documentary, profiles South African lesbian couple, Suzanne Du Toit and Judge Anna-Marie De Vos, and their two adopted children.
Courtesy of Underdog Productions SA www.underdog.co.za