EDN Award 2012 to Dox Box

Taken from the website of EDN: The EDN Award is presented to the DOX BOX initiators a day after the DOX BOX Global Day, an initiative made in response to the current political and human situation in Syria. Current conditions make it impossible to implement this year’s festival, which would have been the 5th edition. Instead the festival organizers set up DOX BOX Global Day, where Syrian documentaries were screened in 38 cities around the world on March 15; a date marking one year of Syrian uprising. 

Upon presenting the EDN Award Hanne Skjødt, Director of EDN says:

Originally The EDN Award was initiated to honour outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture. However, there are times and circumstances where we have to look beyond our own borders and recognise people fighting harder than we could ever imagine doing within our own continent. 

Therefore we have chosen to expand the geographical focus of our award. We want to honour a group of courageous people with a great vision and outstanding will-power. People who keep fighting despite conditions seeming close to impossible. A team, who at hard times does not give up but fight the cruel violence of a heartless dictator by being innovative and showing great spirit. Instead of having their festival stopped by the current situation, they came up with a solution to keep the spirit of their festival alive and create a worldwide recognition for their cause.

It is our great honour to present The EDN Award 2012 to Diana El Jeiroudi, Orwa Nyrabia and The DOX BOX Team.

Photo: Diana el Jeiroudi, Orwa Nyrabia and Hanne Skjødt at the ceremony at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, yesterday.

Theodor

Below a Danish text about the man, who is considered to be the father of Danish documentary, Theodor Cristensen (1914-1967) This coming sunday his film ”Ella” will be shown at Cinemateket in Copenhagen introduced by his son and people, who like Theodor loves Cuba and documentary films.

Theodor. Han blev aldrig kaldt andet, manden der optræder i enhver dansk filmhistorisk fremstilling som den danske filmiske dokumentarismes store teoretiker og som manden bag besættelsestidens mesterlige modstandsfilm ”Det gælder din frihed”. Men det var måske Cuba, der kom til at fylde mest i hans liv. Det var her han underviste, det er her han stadig omtales med stor respekt af ældre cubanske filmfolk, og det var Cuba, som blev ”hans kunstneriske og menneskelige redning”. Det er udgangspunktet for en to timer lang forestilling i Cinemateket på søndag den 18. Klokken 16.30, hvor Theodors søn fortæller om sin far, hvor filmforskeren Palle Bøgelund Petersen fortæller ”om de mindre kendte sider af Theodors liv og virke”, og hvor instruktør og fotograf Steen Dalin kommer ind på Theodors betydning for cubansk film med klip fra optagelser, som Dalin har foretaget i landet. Efterfulgt af filmen om cubanske kvinder, ”Ella”, fra 1964.

Hvis nye læsere vil vide mere om Theodor, så lån John Ernst: Theodor Christensen – om en handling i billeder, en herlig bog fra 1974, som sikkert også kan anskaffes antikvarisk.

I øvrigt forlyder det at Ole Roos arbejder på en stor film om Theodor Christensen, hvis kompagnon i de tidlige år var Ole’s far Karl, hvis lillebror var Jørgen Roos, dansk dokumentarfilms vigtigste instruktør, som filmede Karl og Theodor på Københavns Hovedbanegård da de tog til England for at vise John Grierson et co. “Her er banerne” (1948). Men det er en helt anden historie fra den herlige danske dokumentarfilmiske barndom.

(Og er det en dansk eller en cubansk cigar, Theodor holder på billedet, forhåbentlig det sidste, måske en Montecristo eller en Partagas?)

 www.cinemateket.dk

Global Day Screening Venues

This is a list of all the venues where the films of DOX BOX Globay Day for SYRIA are screened. Please note that the list is arranged as per HOST CITY and aphabetically. You can also check the nearest DOX BOX Global Day venue to you through this map. We wish you a great screening.

 

 

A ———————————————————————————————-

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt / March 15th / at JESUIT CULTURAL CENTER

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands / March 15th / at DEBALIE CINEMA CLUB > Showing “Step by Step” & “Six Ordinary Stories”.

B ———————————————————————————————-

BEIRUT, Lebanon / March 15th / at MATROPOLIS CINEMA

BERKELEY, USA / March 15th / at the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

BERLIN, Germany / March 15th/ at BABYLON > Showing “Step by Step” & “Zabad”, “Black Stone”, and “Turnsoles”.

C ———————————————————————————————-

CAIRO, Egypt / March 15th / at CIMATHEQUE

CARTHAGE, Tunis / March 15th / at CINÉMADART > Showing “Full Program”

CHICAGO, USA / March 15th / at UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO > Showing “Full Program”

COPENHAGEN, Denmark / March 15th / at HOUSE OF CINEMA > Showing “The Daily Life in a Syrian Village”, “Six Ordinary Stories”, & “Turnsoles”

E ———————————————————————————————-

EDINBURGH, Scotland / March 15th / at FILM HOUSE CINEMA à Showing “Black Stone”

EL MANAR, Tunis / March 15th / at AMILCAR à Showing “Full Program”

I ———————————————————————————————-

ISTANBUL, Turkey / March 15th & 16th / at DEPO CINEMA > Showing “Step by Step” & “The Daily Life in a Syrian Village”.

K ———————————————————————————————-

KHARTOUM, Sudan / March 15th / at SUDAN FILM FACTORY

L ———————————————————————————————-

LEIPZIG, Germany / March 15th / at PASSAGE KINOS > Showing “Before Vanishing”, “Six Ordinary Stories”, “The Flood in Baath Country”, & “Turnsoles”

LONDON, UK / March 15th / at the FRONTLINE CLUB > Showing “Film Essay” & “The Flood in Baath Country”

LONDON, UK / March 15th / at the FREE WORD CENTRE > Showing “Zabad”

M ———————————————————————————————-

MALMO, Sweden / March 15th / at the MORISKA PAVILJONGEN (Spegelsalen) > Showing “The Flood in Baath Country”, “Black Stone”, “Step by Step” & “Six Ordinary Stories”.

MARRAKESH, Morocco / March 15th / at the ESAV – ÉCOLE SUPÉRIEURE D’AUDIOVISUEL >

MARSEILLE, France / March 16th / at the MAISON DE LA RÉGION PROVENCE-ALPES-CÔTE > Showing “Step by Step”, “Six Ordinary Stories” & “Turnsoles”.

MONTREAL, Canada / March 15th / at CINEMA POLITICA > Showing “The Flood in Baath Country” & “Step by Step”.

N ———————————————————————————————-

NEW YORK, USA / March 15th / at the SPECTACLE THEATER

NUREMBERG, Germany / March 15th / at the FILMHAUSKINO AND KOMMKINO CINEMAS > Showing “Full Program”.

P ———————————————————————————————-

PARIS, France / March 16th / at LA GÉNÉRALE > Showing “The Flood in Baath Country”, “Step by Step” & “Turnsoles”.

PHILADELPHIA, USA / March 15th / at the TEMPLE UNIVERSITY

PHILADELPHIA, USA / March 15th / at the UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

PRAGUE, Czech USA / March 15th / at the FRENCH INSTITUTE > Showing “The Flood in Baath Country” & “Turnsoles”.

PRIZREN, Kosovo / March 15th / at the CULTURAL HOUS IN PRIZREN > Showing “The Flood in Baath Country”, “The Daily Life in a Syrian Village”, “Step by Step” & “Zabad”.

R ———————————————————————————————-

RABAT, Morrocco / March 15th / at 7EME ART CINEMA

S ———————————————————————————————-

SAO PAULO, Brazil / March 15th / at IT’S ALL TRUE > Showing “SIX Ordinary Stories”.

T ———————————————————————————————-

TANGIER, Morrocco / March 14th & 15th / at CINÉMATHÈQUE DE TANGER > Showing “Full Program”.

THESSALONIKI, Greece / March 15th / at THESSALONIKI FILM FESTIVAL > Showing “Step by Step” & “Turnsoles”.

TUNIS, Tunis / March 15th & 16th / at AMILCAR > Showing “Full Program”

TUNIS, Tunis / March 15th & 16th / at LE MONDIAL > Showing “Full Program”

TUNIS, Carthage / March 15th & 16th / at CINÉMADART > Showing “Full Program”

V ———————————————————————————————-

VANCOUVER, Canada / March 15th / at SIMON FRASIER UNIVERSITY > Showing “The Flood in Baath Country”, “Step by Step” & “Black Stone”.

W ———————————————————————————————-

WARSAW, Poland / March 15th / at ZNAJOMI ZNAJOMYCH WATCH DOCS > Showing “The Flood in Baath Country”, “Step by Step” & “Zabad”.

WARSAW, Poland / March 16th / at CAFE KULTURALNA > Showing “Turnsoles”.

Syria Global Day 15 March 2012

On their website the organisers of Dox Box festival address us in the following way, under the headline Syria Global Day:

The fifth edition of DOX BOX International Documentary Film festival in Syria this year was supposed to take place in March, and conclude on March 15th , 2012. However, the festival team has decided to refrain from holding this edition in protest against the killing and oppression of civilians in this country. Herewith our message to the world:

We are outraged, disheartened and anguished at the silence of the world as it has witnessed the massacre of our people. Silence is complacency. Our people, whom, for the record, have embraced the magical gaze of documentary cinema in Damascus, Homs, Tartous, and Aleppo, laughed, cried and dreamed, watched stories and people from Egypt, Serbia, Tunis, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Burma, Chile, Morocco, Ecuador, Algeria, France, Lebanon, Palestine, Holand, the USA, China, India, the UK, Germany, Czeck Republic, Turkey, Finland, Sweden, Jordan… and many other countries and people in the world… 

This silence means that the world only sees in Syria the Hamidiyyeh Souq, the Crusader castles, and a handful theories about geo-strategic equations in the region… It is the same narrow lens through which we once used to see the world through, when we were in the 1980s, isolated, learning about the people of the world of the world through our ‘confiscated’ evening news broadcast… when all we knew about other people was our government’s briefing of their governments’ political agendas. This was the reason why DOX BOX, since it was born,

fought hard to forge a space where we, Syrians, can share and understand how human fears, aspiration, questions and dignity can be one, across the planet, and still be variant and colorful.

Thus, today, it is not the time or place to hold screenings of the world inside Syria. On the contrary, today is the time to put up screenings of Syria; globally.  We want the world, through our technically-modest cinema, to see our people.  We want the world to witness how poverty, oppression and isolation do not prevent humans from being spectacularly brave, stubborn and dignified. In a Global Day for Syria that we choose to take place precisely on the very evening of the “canceled” closing night of DOX BOX, which happens to coincide with the first anniversary of the Syrian revolution.  A coincidence that we read not see as a random event, but rather as an intuition, confirming documentary cinema’s role as a mirror people’s lives and as an indicator of justice.

On this DOX BOX Global Day, we will exhibit some works from the two princely masters of cinema and dissent, Omar Amiralay and Ossama Mohammad, as well as works from the generation of successors, Nidal al-Dibs, Meyyar al-Roumi, Reem Ali, Joude Gorani, Rami Farah and one of the most recent works produced today, Sunflower, from Rastan in August of 2011, directed by a young filmmaker who shall remain anonymous for his or her safety.

We invite audiences in cities across the world to attend these screenings on the night of March 15th, the DOX BOX Global Day, and share with Syrians a chapter of their life, from 1974 until this day.

We wish you great screenings, and hope you support our people\’s cause.

http://www.dox-box.org/index.php?lang=2&

Dox Box Global Day

Syrian Documentary films will be screened around the world on March 14th, 15th and 16th, 2012: London, Berlin, Paris, NY, Prague, Tunis, Alexandria, Leipzig, Nuremberg, Marseilles, Cairo, Tangier, Marrakesh, Malmo, Copenhagen (see below, Danish readers), Montreal, Chicago, LA, Philadelphia, Vancouver, Kosovo, Thessaloniki, Beirut… and more…

Go to the facebook page below and get more information about the films. where and when. And see how widespread the support of the Dox Box festival is. It is all over and is a touchingly strong manifestation of a very important global sign of warm thoughts and solidarity with Dox Box. For what has been done with the festival and is being done by the festival staff to inform us about Syria today. New films will be shown and attraction is being drawn to what goes on in the country.

On the website of Dox Box letters are being posted from friends of the festival. This is what I wrote to Dox Box:  “It goes without saying that there will be no DoxBox festival 2012. We will not go to the cinema in Damascus to watch films together in a crowded cinema hall. We will not meet during the day to talk about and develop new projects, or to find out about possibilities for collaboration, or simply to get closer to what makes a good documentary. A good film. I have in the first four editions of DoxBox been an enthusiastic participant and supporter of a film educational, film political, film emotional, film philosophical initiative that is unique not only in Syria but in the whole region. Because it has been organised with competence and strategy, heart and mind. DoxBox is alive and will continue. Noone can stop creativity”.

Thank you Orwa, Diana, Guevara, Sasha, Dohan and other members of the staff!

http://www.facebook.com/DOXBOX

http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/36564.aspx

http://www.dox-box.org/index.php?lang=2&

Dox Box Global Day – in Denmark

For our Danish readers: Gratis entré til syriske film + introduktion i solidaritet med DOX BOX torsdag den 15. marts kl. 17-19. I Husets Biograf præsenterer CPH:DOX en særvisning af to aktuelle, syriske dokumentarfilm med introduktion. En af filmene, den splinternye Tournesol, er en rapport fra den krigshærgede oprørsby Homs, skabt af en syrisk filmmager, der naturligvis er anonym. Det er en unik mulighed for faktisk at få et indblik i livet – og døden – i den by, der strømmer så mange modsatrettede nyheder fra.

Visningen er en spontan aktion, der finder sted som en del af DOX BOX Global Day – en global manifestation af solidaritet med den syriske dokumentarfilm-festival DOX BOX, der skulle have fundet sted den 7. – 15. marts. Som følge af regimets overgreb på befolkningen har festivalledelsen imidlertid besluttet at aflyse årets festival. I stedet har de inviteret samarbejdspartnere verden over til at deltage i en global éndags-festival den 15. marts, som ikke blot skulle have været festivalens afslutningsaften – men som også er ét-årsdagen for den folkelige opstand i landet.

DOX BOX Global Day afholdes simultant i hele 28 lande verden over, fra New York og London til Vancouver og Malmö. CPH:DOX er glade for medvirke til en aften med film i solidaritet med DOX BOX, de syriske filmskabere og det syriske folk for at bakke op om deres kamp for frihed.

Aftenen er arrangeret i samarbejde med DOX BOX, Proaction Film, IMS (International Media Support) og Husets Biograf.

Sean McAllister: Japan: A Story of Love and Hate

The British filmmaker Sean McAllister took part in the East European Platform event in Prague organised by IDF (Institute of Documentary Film). He ran a masterclass, where he showed clips from his many films shot in troubled areas (Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Syria and Yemen, where his last film ”The Reluctant Revolutionary” was shot, it had its premiere at the Berlinale 2012). For a night screening McAllister had chosen to show his 2008 work from Japan, ”Japan: A Story of Love and Hate”, a film shot in a non-war-non-conflict area, and a film that he appreciated a lot himself.

As did I, for good reasons, as the film is an excellent conveyed story from a Japan that we know so little about, a film that simply takes us to meet Japanese people, who are open-minded when it comes to their private life, and a film that shows McAllister’s unique talent for getting close to people, have their trust and treat them with respect. The director is involved, his voice is heard, he arranges and pushes the story, and he sets an atmosphere of serious fun. It is a film made with and not about.

It works thanks to Naoki, his 56 year old English speaking protagonist, divorced several times, once a businessman on top of the world and now a postman with a tiny salary. His luck is that Yoshie, 29, takes care of him, she has several jobs including a night one, where she leaves home to entertain men at bars. They live in a very small flat and this is where most of the film takes place. Where most of the conversations between McAllister and Naoki take place as well, and they are pretty intimate. Naoki has a kind of fatalistic approach to his situation, laughs at it and defines it to be all because of capitalism pointing at the director with a laugh – ”that you Westerners brought to us”.

I have never seen a film like that from Japan, about poverty and family trouble and love life crisis. You are never bored, on the contrary, you are in the film from start to end, and – gosh – I have never seen a filmmaker bring a viagra pill as a gift to a character, as does McAllister does on his second vsit to the father of Yoshie, who has the same age and problem as Naoki, who with this visit, after several years of being with his daughter, sees her father for the first time.

UK, Channel4, 2008, 70 mins.

http://www.seanmcallister.com/

http://www.tenfootfilms.co.uk/

Broomfield & Churchill: Sarah Palin. You Betcha

The style of British director Broomfield is well known from many of his films. He is in the picture, he is a character himself, the journalist looking for characters, and the truth, walking in and out of doors, very often as the upper class, well dressed British gentleman asking questions, very often without revealing his critical mission. It worked perfectly with ”The Leader, the Driver and the Driver’s Wife” from apartheid South Africa and with other films, where he is trying to get an interview with politicians and celebreties.

This is also the case with his newest film, on Sarah Palin, but he fails to get the interview, he wants, and the film fails for the same reason, as he has to use archive (mostly tv) material from her career that brings nothing new to the screen. Well, he gets talks with Palin’s father and with all the people that she has been using and betraying, but as you all the way through the film waits for the clever Broomfield to get close to Palin, you end up being disappointed and bored seeing scene after scene with the director about to fall on his ass up there on the icy roads of Alaska.

I saw the film on Danish Dokumania, a rerun yesterday morning, in a version where the image pretty often had a text coming up saying ”only for preview”. Ooooops! Embarrassing for DR2, Danish public broadcaster not to have checked copy before transmission!

www.dokumania.dk

http://www.nickbroomfield.com/

Egle Vertelyte: UB Lama

In this sympathetic documentary, that can be watched by kids as well, Galaa, who is a twelve years old boy from Mongolia, is attracted to hip hop music, is not really fond of going to school, makes problems for his mother, sometimes small sometimes bigger. His father is dead, he tells about the dramatic circumstances, and the mother thinks he should go to a lama school: When you become a lama the grief and pain of poverty will disappear.

The film crew follows Galaa and his family closely, has caught many fine situations and moments, inluding those where the kid’s world is falling apart because the lama school can not accept his admission to the school before the next year. At that point Galaa has peeped into the class room where boys of same age as him are having the experience, and the fun, that he really had hoped for.

A fine non-exotic and fresh insight to the life of a poor family in a culture that we know so little about. That also makes you think how seldom it is to find good documentaries that will work for children as well as for grown-ups.

Lithuania, 2011, 51 mins., Prod.: Studio Nominum, Editor: Francesca Scalisi

http://www.scanorama.lt/en/ub-lama

Liga Gaisa: The End Game

A Latvian film team makes a film about a group of Danish, who suffer from sclerosis in different stages. The group is followed while they are rehearsing for the set-up of ”End Game” by Samuel Beckett, accompanied by their thoughts and reflections on their life situation and why Beckett is the right author to play. They are all pretty well of in terms of help to get around with their handicap, they have jobs – well in this film the Danish welfare system shows itself from a postive side, writes this Danish blogger.

Back to the film, which is held in a non-sentimental tone. The filmmakers succeed to give the individual characters space to develop, they are all interesting, at the same time as you follow the play being developed. ”Beckett deals with human limitations – he sees it as a strength”, says one of the actors, and right he is, it is, as said as well, about life’s basic conditions, and with this film about physical handicapped people, ”End Game” is given an extra dimension.

The film, that has professional, fine camera work and a natural rythm in editing, has been to a couple of festivals, more will follow, and that Danish television is not in the film already, can be corrected very easily through a buy.

Latvia, 2011, 52 mins.

Link to dokweb.net