The 11th edition of the One World Romania International Human Rights & Documentary Festival (March, 16-25) includes a category called “memory in Motion”, which appeared to complete the attempts of the OWR team to bring light upon different historical events, in order to reveal things about the present. Including this category in such a consistent form has one of its origins in the constant preoccupation of the One World Romania Association for
recovering the documentary heritage of the former “Alexandru Sahia” production studio.
The most recent films of the famous filmmakers Bill Morrison and Péter Forgács, experts in creatively using audiovisual archive footage will have the Romanian premiere at the OWR. In
Dawson City: Frozen Time, a film archive discovered in 1978 buried in the land of the small Canadian town of Dawson City is the pretext for director Bill Morrison to uncover several historic events. The film`s soundtrack is composed by the Sigur Ros vocal, Jón Þór Birgisson. The latest episode of the series “Private Hungary” dedicated by Péter Forgács to the 20th century Hungary,
Picturesque Epochs, captures the details from the life of painter Maria Ganoczy, always preoccupied by how to reflect the history of the century she passed through in her
work.
Bill Morrison and Péter Forgács will be in Bucharest during the festival and on Sunday, March 18, they will take part in a special event organized at the Rezidența BRD Scena9, in addition to the film screenings in the “memory in Motion” category. Another guest of the event is
Dana Bunescu, editor of films like
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu / Autobiografia lui Nicolae Ceaușescu (directed by
Andrei Ujică) and
Dead Nation / Țara moartă (directed by
Radu Jude). Another important debate is dedicated to the situation of the film archives in the ex-Communist Block, reuniting important guests such as Oksana Sarkisova (Blinken Open Society Archives, CEU - Budapest), Stefanie Eckert (DEFA Foundation) and Michael Loebenstein (general secretary of the International Federation of Film Archives, director of the Film Museum - Viena).
Mihai Fulger, the director of the Romanian National Film Archives will join them as well.
During the same event the CineActiv Association of Professionals in Cinematography will launch a campaign promoting the importance of the audio-visual archives for the good of the collective cultural and socio-political history consciousness. At the event short editor films making use of archive images will be screened; they were produced especially for the campaign by the filmmakers
Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan, Cristina Haneș, Nora Agapi, Andra Popescu,
Alina Manolache, Dragoș Hanciu and Radu Jude.
COMPLETE SCHEDULE OF THE EVENT
Rezidența BRD Scena9 | Sunday, March 18 | 3:00 – 18:00 | Free admission
13.00: Launch of campaign of CineActiv Association for Professionals in Cinematography .
14.00: Playing with Archives with filmmakers Bill Morrison, Péter Forgács and Dana Bunescu.
16.00: Film Archives of the Former Communist Block, with Oksana Sarkisova, Stefanie Eckert, Michael Loebenstein and Mihai Fulger.
On the same topic of archive memory, another special programme at the 2018 OWR is the Focus dedicated to filmmaker Jonas Mekas. His filmed diaries are praising life, with its happy moments along with the sad ones, giving as much attention to geniuses and to no-names who happen to cross his path. While waiting for a full retrospective of this filmmaker`s work, OWR 11 proposes two of his most surprising – and lengthy – films:
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty și
Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR.
As it happened at the previous editions, the 2018 one has a new programme dedicated to the documentaries produced by the “Alexandru Sahia” Studio. “Sahia Pick & Mix” brings films in which the ideological order is less transparent and the documentary endeavour organizes around some problems or practices that are connected to the filmmaker`s relationship with the everyday life: observation, relationship, event, handling the unexpected.
On Thursday, March, 22, 2018, the fourth DVD of the “Sahia Vintage” collection will be released, entitled “Documentary and Political Orders”. The selection describes the spectrum of the different positions of the Sahia films in regard to the political commission, from the basic propaganda film to the art documentary and the passing production of the studio. At the DVD launch, three films will be screened and there will be a discussion with
Adina Brădeanu, the project coordinator, about the diversity of the Sahia productions and about the numerous ways in which the filmmakers of those years approached the subjects.
Details:
www.oneworld.ro