Traverse the Global Village From Your Cinema Seat

Traverse the Global Village From Your Cinema Seat

Documentary Edge Festival 2011 –
WORLD CINEMA

Compelling, edgy and fraught with human drama, the World Cinema programming always provides an intriguing glimpse into affairs that we may see on our TV screens on a frequent basis and those that are often neglected or simply regarded as “an all too common occurrence.”

Academy Award winning director Jon Blair joins three men into the notorious favelas of Rio De Janeiro. Dancing with the Devil (UK) follows 28-year-old drug lord Spiderman on his routine patrol around the areas he controls, Inspector Leonardo Torres inching through alleyways of another shantytown with shots ringing out around him and Pastor Dione attempting to broker peace amongst all the parties involved – all the while trawling for lost souls.

An African Election (Ghana/Switzerland/USA) documents the 2008 presidential elections in the West African country of Ghana and its complex, political machinery – that of a third world democracy yearning to become legitimized to its first world contemporaries.

The proverbial ghost town of Darwin (Switzerland) can be found at the end of a weathered road in Death Valley, California. Its population (est. 35) of drop outs and misfits must find a way to coexist without a government, a church, jobs or children in the area – a contrast to it’s heyday in 1874…

Eichmann’s End – Love, Treachery, Death (Germany) chronicles the life of Adolf Eichmann – the organizer of the deportations of European Jews into Nazi concentration camps. After a period of hiding in Argentina, he is recognized and suddenly kidnapped by the Mossad in 1960.

In Granito (USA) characters sift for clues buried in archives of mind and place and historical memory, seeking to uncover a narrative that could unlock the past and settle matters of life and death in the present. Like a crime thriller where the narrative is revealed step by step, this epic film travels between present and past, uncovering evidence of massive crimes and bringing accountability to the present.

A Palestinian woman, unable to treat her baby in Gaza, is struggling to save his life after losing two other children to the same genetic defect. As a last resort she sets out to get treatment in an Israeli hospital – which Precious Life (Israel) intricately details.

Rainmakers (Netherlands) is told from the perspective of four civil activists who refuse to accept the ongoing ecological destruction of their homeland. Bordering heroism and stubbornness, the four explain why they have the courage to fight the pettish and aggressive local authorities, against all odds.

Thieves by Law (Germany/Israel/Spain) is a front-row invitation into the living rooms and offices of some of the most controversial and elite head honchos in the Russian mafia. Rising through the criminal ranks, the balance of what’s legitimate versus what’s illegal, and the meaning behind those tattoos.

Finally, Living Skin (Egypt) speaks about children as young as 10 years old, whose families live under the poverty line, who are forced to leave their education and work in dangerous and hazardous jobs.

For more on the films on show at next year’s festival, visit www.documentaryedge.org.nz

ENDS

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