All Films

Jongmyo: A Shrine For Human Beings

2008 • 52 min • United States of America, South Korea

Jongmyo is the royal ancestrial shrine of the Josecon Dynasty. Considered as one of the most sublime and moderate architecture of the Joseon Dynasty. Jongmyo was designated as World Heriage by UNESCO in 1995.

Gender Me: Homosexuality and Islam

2008 • 52 min • Norway

Gender Me is a road movie about Mansour’s voyage into the world of Islam. It is a personal odyssey through a world of taboos, filled with contradictory images. He explores questions regarding faith and gender in Islam with a special focus on the unusual stories of Muslim gays. Mansour is a homosexual Iranian refugee who has been living in Oslo for the past 18 years where he works as a pharmacist. Now he wants to travel back to Istanbul, where he lived for two years before he was granted asylum in Norway.

Be Happy, It's an Order!

2008 • 5 min • Turkey

A humorous parody addressed to the Turkish regime and its attempt to control people’s way of life by imposing standards on how to have a good time and achieve a perfect state of happiness.

Videomappings : Aida, Palestine

2008 • 45 min • Palestinian Territory, France

Somewhere, amid a tangle of borders, a refugee camp. People trapped in a situation that becomes more absurd every day, trying to live a human existence. We don't see their faces. We don't see the places they talk about. However, we are drawn very close to their intimate experience of the world as we follow, line by line, the maps they are drawing to represent the complexity of the spaces around them.

Pomeranie

2008 • 12 min • Russia

There are places in which space is turned inside out, and time is flowing backwards.

This Joint Is Jumpin': Jazz Musician Fats Waller

2008 • 53 min • United States of America

This Joint Is Jumpin' celebrates the life and work of the great Fats Waller. Fats started playing church organ at age 10 and his all-action musical career ended, full speed ahead, at the age of 39. This documentary features his son, Maurice, and Eddie Barefield and Marshal Royal, fellow musicians. Sammy Price and Paul Machlin talk about stride and Andy Razaf's widow, Jean Hutson, remembers him.

Light House

2008 • 10 min

Produced for Glass Eye Pix as part of their 2008 Creepy Christmas Online Film Festival, in which each short was inspired by the inhabitants of a Christmas diorama advent calendar. Each filmmaker was assigned a specific date and given the props that were used in that window to use in their short. This is the sixth film in the series.

Aanaatt

2008 • 5 min • Germany, Japan, United Kingdom

"An exciting experiment in the tradition of Oskar Fischinger (Komposition in Blau, 1935), Dwinell Grant (Composition No. 1, 1940) and Slavko Vorkapich (Abstract Experiment in Kodachrome, 1950s). Max Hattler presents a well-done interaction between music and moving images. Space is turned upside down and the animated objects become faceless dancers in a constructivist ballet." Vienna Independent Shorts 2010, jury statement by Anton Fuxjäger

Harry Doright's Prelude to Hell

2008 • 15 min • Netherlands

At his 60th birthday Harry Doright is visited by a demon who claims his soul and the soul of his loved ones.

Nº 27

2008 • 19 min • Brazil

- The bathroom is under maintenance. - Luiz answers, holding the handle with all his strength. - Under maintenance? Stop the fucking talk, open the door! - The bathroom is under maintenance, look for another one, please. - What do you mean?... open the door right away, I want to pee, dude! - Hey man, can you call the coordinator, please...

The Imaginary Line

2008 • 30 min • Uruguay

This documentary takes us to the three most important festivals of the year in Aceguá, and thus tells the story of the town. It sits on the border between Uruguay and Brazil, but it is on an imaginary line as this is a dry border as there is no river or stream to mark the boundary. We meet the characters, we watch their activities and we are introduced to their customs.

Flowers of Rwanda

2008 • 24 min • Spain

Rwanda. 14 years after the genocide that took the lives of more than 800,000 people. What situation is the country in now? What feelings reign in the hearts of the victims? Can victims and executioners coexist? What value does education have in a society that has experienced genocide? Can it happen again? Who should act when a genocide is taking place? Do we have any responsibility as individuals?

Bread of Life

2008 • 7 min • Egypt

A video/sound installation piece recorded by visual artist Adel Abidin: "I was once served bread in a restaurant in Cairo that was so hard it seemed to me more suitable for playing music than to be eaten. It made a pleasant sound as though it was an instrument. I gathered four percussionists who earn their living by playing music for belly dancers in nightclubs and asked them to play with this bread instead."

The Big Trip

2008 • 46 min • Brazil, Israel, Uruguay

Over half of Israel's youth takes a backpacking trip after finishing mandatory army service. Vacillating between extremes, this unique trip represents a transformation in Israeli culture.

Alison Watt: Phantom

2008 • 53 min

Alison Watt became the National Gallery's Seventh Associate Artist in 2006. This art film records her two-year residency, as she created paintings inspired by masterpieces in the National Gallery. She already had a lifelong attachment to paintings in the collection, yet the prolonged contact, particularly with Saint Francis in Meditation by Francisco de Zurbarán, led her to notice new details and unexpected nuances which influenced her own art. Through a series of interviews with Watt, this art film documents the formation of this exhibition, with particular emphasis on the creative process.

O Sete Trouxas

2008 • 14 min • Brazil

Jair tells his granddaughter about his childhood adventures, his fear of the legendary “Sete Trouxas” and how, with the help of a friend, he tried to face the monster.

Plakatkino

2008 • 9 min • Croatia

At one place, where many billboards took turns throughout the year, all of a sudden we witness fast forwarded change of pictures. It is as if the billboard became a movie screen on which may stories have been told. When 'the screening' stops and the movie screen becomes empty, people walk by it. These people, with their life stories could perhaps be more interesting than those on the billboard.

Deadspiel

2008 • 8 min

Ghoulishly funny. this short follows a curling match between humans and zombies who must choose between sportsmanship and bloodsport.

Året var 1958

2008 • 60 min • Sweden

1958 - the year when Ingvar Kamprad opened the doors to his first Ikea department store in Älmhult. The World Cup is played in Sweden, where Kurre Hamrin scores a legendary goal against West Germany and Sweden takes a sensational silver. The first female police officers start serving this year with the same duties as the male police officers, however, they were not allowed to carry a saber but had to settle for a baton.

Little Caughnawaga: To Brooklyn and Back

2008 • 57 min • Canada

For over 50 years, the Kahnawake Mohawks, of Quebec, Canada occupied a 10 square block area in the North Gowanus section of Brooklyn, which became known as Little Caughnawaga. The men, skilled ironworkers, came to New York in search of work and brought their wives, children and often, extended family with them. The story of the Mohawk ironworkers is an important one and is one that has been told and continues to be told through documentaries, newspaper and magazine articles. Yet the stories of Kahnawake Mohawk women who lived in Brooklyn have gone untold.

O bird, tell me

2008 • 15 min • Syrian Arab Republic

When a new TV show about finding missing people airs, a taxi driver sends a message through the show to find his sister who has been missing for two years.

Fro

2008 • 15 min • Ukraine

Fro is a woman from a small Ukrainian town. Her life has become dull and sluggish since her husband left to seek new horizons and employment opportunities in Europe. All she can do is wait. An adaptation of Andrei Platonov's short story "Fro."

Rocketman: The Luckiest Man on Earth

2008 • 55 min

Rocket Man, the luckiest man on earth... or is he? When the BDU-33 bomb fell from the F-16 fighter plane on Thursday, March 13, 2008, it made U.S. history being the first military bomb to accidentally fall on a residential home. For Jeremy Isbell, resident of Tulsa, Oklahoma and the occupant of this destroyed dwelling, this was only a single incident in a long string of bizarre occurrences in his extraordinary life. Be prepared to hear the tale of an outlandish bombing on an innocent and unfortunate citizen.

Between Hot and Cold

2008 • 8 min • South Korea

A little boy and his uncle are playing loudly in a cold bath on Sunday morning.