6th Lemesos International Documentary Festival

The “Lemesos International Documentary Festival” returns for the sixth consecutive year rejuvenated and upgraded, seeking those moments from human reality that will constitute imaginative, subversive and adventurous cinematographic wanderings. The Festival, once again, aims to provide a program through which everyone will be able to distinguish, analyze and perceive the multiple social, and not only, changes that take place today the world over. Par excellence, documentary is the cinematographic genre that deals with recording and interpreting reality, and has the ability to rejuvenate us as people by reflecting our participation and involvement in the world we live in.

The event is organized by Brave new Culture in collaboration this year with the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation. The Festival is funded and supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture, Cyprus University of Technology, Media Desk Cyprus, the Embassies of Holland, Finland, Germany and Denmark in Cyprus, the Limassol Cine Club, and other private and public institutions.

Also a first this year, the Festival has extended its duration (from five days of screenings to eight), since over and above the main screenings that will be taking place at the B’ Municipal Market (Theatro Ena), additional screenings will be taking place at Sousami, in the heart of the old city of Limassol and just a few meters from the main projection venue.

The Festival will take place between the 3rd and 10th of August 2011, and during this period some of the most important documentaries of the year will be screened for the first time in Cyprus – a careful selection of the best films of the year in this category. A total of 20 documentaries will be screened, most of which have received awards in some of the biggest international Festivals. As in previous years, directors and producers of some of the films will be Official Guests of the Festival, and their presence will give the public the opportunity to have direct contact with them.

The Documentaries
Some of the film titles that are part of the 2011 screening program are Position Among the Stars (the last part of Leonard Retel Helmrich’s awarded trilogy on Indonesia, which presents the life of the Christian-Muslim Sjamsuddin family), The Oath (the film presents the interlinked and dramatic stories of two brothers-in-law whose links to Al-Qaeda in the 90s propelled them on divergent courses), The Game Must Go On (a social documentary with children playing the roles of activists in a nightmarish and hostile Patra), People I Could Have Been and Maybe Am (a fiction documentary filmed solely on a mobile phone, based on the premise “what would it be like to enter the life of a complete stranger?”), Steam of Life (naked Finnish men in saunas speak straight from the heart cleansing themselves, both physically and mentally), Blood in the Mobile (the main part of minerals used to produce cell phones are coming from the mines in the Eastern DR Congo. The production of phones has a dark, bloody side, which the film tries to bring to light), In This Waiting (relatives of those who went missing during the Cypriot tragedy recall their painful stories: from the last moments spent together, to the recent exhumations that might shed light on the fate of their loved ones), How to Make a Book with Steidl (a film portrait of one of the most important photographic and art book publishers of the last decade), Paradise Hotel (a timely story about the 70′s Bulgarian social experiment, an attempt to integrate Roma in the mainstream society, and the aftermath of it 25 years later), Exit Through the Gift Shop (this is the inside story of Street Art - a brutal and revealing account of what happens when fame, money and vandalism collide), Waste Land (stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit).

For more information, as well as the complete screening program and film synopsis please see the attached Festival program or visit www.filmfestival.com.cy

DocsTalk
In the framework of parallel activities taking place during the Festival, DocsTalk will be hosting workshops for professionals, with the aim to give the opportunity to Cypriot directors, producers and professionals to develop their abilities to produce documentary films and to develop a more global image on the subject.

DocsTalk 2011 is organized in collaboration with the Directors Guild of Cyprus and the Cyprus Community Media Centre (CCMC) and is made up of the following three entities:

Masterclass: ‘Single Shot Cinema’ (Fri. 5.8 / 10:00 – 13:00)
The Master Class will present a self-invented method of filmmaking, which is of interest not only to directors and producers, but to cinematographers and editors. The Master Class will be presented by Jasper Naaijkens, editor of the award winning film Position Among The Stars by the Dutch director Leonard Retel Helmrich. On the occasion of the screening of this important film (which has won awards at Sundance and IDFA as well as in other Festivals), the Master Class will present a method called “single shot Cinema”, for which Leonard Retel Helmrich has been praised worldwide for its use and has won some of the most important international awards.

Presentation: Rada Sesic (Fri. 5.8 / 16:00 – 18:00)
Acclaimed festival programmer, lecturer and film author Rada Sesic will attend the Festival in her capacity as the main selector of the documentary competition at Sarajevo Film Festival, one of the programmers at IDFA in Amsterdam, IFFR Rotterdam and the programming director of a new film festival in Utrecht Eastern Neighbours. In the presentation, Sesic will give information about festival participation, selection process and about various international workshops and initiatives which the filmmakers can become involved in. In addition to the presentation, selected projects (following application procedure) will be discussed with Rada Sesic in dedicated, scheduled one-to-one meetings.

‘Sources 2’ Seminar: ‘Writing Documentary’ (Sat. 6.8 / 10:00 – 16:00)
‘Sources 2’ adviser Arash T. Riahi will guide a one-day seminar focusing on concept development, storytelling and scriptwriting of feature-length documentaries. The target group is documentary filmmakers (directors, producers). The seminar will focus on supporting indigenous stories of interest to a European audience and with production potential. Ideally, the story should be rooted in the social and cultural backgrounds of its writer yet also have a cross-cultural appeal. ‘Sources 2’ is to contribute to a higher standard of European film production and to win back European audiences for European films, both in the cinema and on television.

DocsTalk is open for all and it will take place at the Andreas Themistocleous Building of the Cyprus University of Technology in Lemesos. English will be the working language of the workshop.

General Information

Entrance to Festival Screenings and DocsTalk, Cyprus is free of charge.

Subtitles
All the films will be screened in their original language with subtitles in Greek and English.

Click here to download the screenings program