Saturday's Films at the One World Media Festival

After the recent Lampedusa boat disaster - where over 300 immigrants lost their lives when their vessel capsized in waters between Eritrea and Italy - the subject of the perilous dangers of migration has once again been forefronted in the European public’s consciousness.

The topic will be addressed through a daylong film programme at the inaugural One World Media Festival, to be held at UCL in association with Open City Docs. The free two-day festival focuses on global media and human rights issues, with keynote sessions, panel discussions and selection of film screenings from around the globe. Taking up from the theme of global conversations between the ‘North’ and ‘South’, Saturday’s film programme will explore the media’s treatment of migration especially asylum seekers. How does Europe deal with human rights issues that are closer to home?

One of the films to most directly address the mooted topic will be Closed Sea (Mare Chiuso). From directors Andrea Segre & Stefano Liberti, the documentary takes a close look at those making the treacherous journey from Northern Africa across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy. The passage is fraught with considerable danger and no guarantee of any reward upon arrival due to Italy’s ‘push-back policy’. This legislature, an agreement signed between former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and now deceased Libyan ruler Colonel Gaddafi, denotes that to control the flow of migration, those intercepted at sea are sent back to Libya, facing persecution upon their return.

Later in the day, Special Flight (Vol special) documents a further angle on the subject matter; the harsh treatment of migrants scheduled for deportation. The film takes place in Switzerland where, if those earmarked to be deported fail to cooperate, they are forced to take a titular ‘special flight’ in less than pleasant conditions to their native countries.

While documentary is a direct and often penetrative way to address such underseen and volatile subject matter, it should be noted that it is not the only method at a filmmaker’s disposal. Supporting this ideal is Saturday’s exciting double-bill of animated short 1000 Voices and feature drama Leave to Remain.

The former is a ten-minute long animation about the UK’s policy of indefinite detention for asylum seekers. Evocative and striking imagery is accompanied by real phone calls made by detainees from inside their holding cells, and the effect is potent and emotive for the viewer.

Leave to Remain is a first feature from director Bruce Goodison. Starring Toby Jones as a teacher working with teenage asylum seekers who are fleeing their conflict-ravaged homelands, the film is an impressive meditation on the ambiguities and difficulties facing young people who enter the immigration system in the UK.

Both films prove that you can encourage just as much of a reaction from audiences using fiction or impressionistic imagery as you can with documentary. 

The cumulative impact of the Saturday programme at the One World Media Festival is a thought-provoking blend of discussion topics and creative filmmaking from a slate of talented directors. For those who believe that cinema and activism are two branches of the same tree, it’s an event that will provide a satisfying balance of debate and art.

This post is by Tom Grater, who has a wonderful documentary blog you can check out here.

Guest Post - Lost Rivers

The Thames isn’t the only water body flowing through London - its tributaries lie buried under layers of Victorian brick and concrete. Roads, buildings, and streams of vehicles and people move over them daily, unaware of the flux of life that moves underground. This film excavates these forgotten flows in major cities such as London, Brescia, Seoul, Toronto, and Montreal. Here, the film makes visible these unseen movements in contemporary city life, reclaimed and brought aboveground, as it were, by the network of people who are fascinated by the entrails of cities - people called ‘drainers’, urban outlaws who trespass in the name of exploration.

The film features interviews with these urban explorers, historians, city planners, amongst others, and it projects a sense of the growing importance for city dwellers to reconnect with the natural landscape that underlies all of our urban spaces. Here in London, as in other cities around the world, inhabitants are taking charge of their cities and visually reinserting history and nature into the urban fabric - which is precisely what filmmakers such as Bâcle achieve with a film like Lost Rivers.

Bâcle is based in Montreal, Canada, and is currently developing her second feature script with the support of SODEC and Telefilm Canada. She holds a BA (with distinction) in Communication Studies from Concordia University and recently completed the prestigious Masters program in Screenwriting and Producing at the University of Westminister Film School in London (UK).

Watch the trailer for Lost Rivers below:

Lost Rivers - OFFICIAL TRAILER from Catbird Productions on Vimeo

Buy your tickets for the UK Premiere HERE. The screening is on Friday 21 June at 14:30 in conjunction with a panel discussion featuring the director Caroline Bâcle, Dave Webb (Environment Agency) and Danielle Plamondon (a Drain & Sewer Explorer), chaired by Karen Brown. Lost Rivers is screening as part of our City Stories strand, along with Grasp the Nettle, Tchoupitoulas, The Human Scale, and The Venice Syndrome.

This guest post is by Pei-Sze Chow, a current PhD student in Film Studies at University College London and one of our Screen Notes series contributors.

Screen Notes: Do You Really Want To Know?

Our Screen Notes series allows a more in-depth discussion of the films that we are showing this year at Open City Docs Fest. Contributors from a variety of vantage points and fields including scientists, scholars and students have given their unique perspectives on the documentaries they've enjoyed, sharing their expertise and experiences to add an extra dimension to the documentaries.

Dr. Ed Wild is a Clinical Lecturer in Neurology at UCL Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London, and an Honorary Specialist Registrar in Neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. Ed studied medicine at Cambridge University and has researched Huntington’s Disease for many years. Since 2009 he has been collaborating with Dr Jeff Carroll to make Huntington's Disease (HD) research news accessible to the global HD community.

Dr. Wild has written about Do You Really Want To Know? a documentary about Huntington's Disease, a genetic disease that is a incurable fatal combination of Alzheimer's, ALS and schizophrenia. Technological breakthroughs in HD research now mean that sufferers can be tested to predict their genetic future and prevent their children from inheriting the disease, but the decision to get tested is far from easy.

Directed by John Zaritsky and produced in Canada, the documentary was released in 2012 with a run time of 72'. Do You Really Want To Know? is being screened on Thursday 20 June at 18:45, and will be followed by a panel discussion with Charles Sabine (Broadcast Journalist & HDA Spokesperson), Prof. Sarah Tabrizi (Clinical Neurologist, UCL), and Bill Crowder (Head of Care Services, England & Wales, HDA). Buy tickets HERE.

Please follow the link to read Wild's article https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2ELCplMBK2QdHg2d25LWmhBTm8/edit?usp=sharing

Screen Notes: The Act of Killing

Our Screen Notes series allows a more in-depth discussion of the films that we are showing this year at Open City Docs Fest. Contributors from a variety of vantage points and fields including scientists, scholars and students have given their unique perspectives on the documentaries they've enjoyed, sharing their expertise and experiences to add an extra dimension to the documentaries.

Our first issue is from Mark Le Fanu, director of film history at the European Film College in Denmark. Besides his interest in Japanese cinema, he is the author of a widely-acclaimed pioneer study of the Russian film-maker Tarkovsky (The Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, BFI books), and is a frequent contributor to journals such as Sight & Sound and Positif.

Le Fanu has written about The Act Of Killing, which just won the Special Jury Award at the 20th Sheffield Doc/Fest last weekend. Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn and a filmmaker who has preferred to remain anonymous, the film was produced in Denmark, Norway, and the UK and released in 2012, with a run time of 159’. Nominated for the Open City Docs Grand Jury Award, The Act of Killing will be screened on Sat 22 June at 13:30 in the Bloomsbury Theatre, followed by a director Q&A session, for which you can buy tickets HERE.

In addition to the screening, director Joshua Oppenheimer will be hosting a Masterclass entitled Cinema and Memory on Saturday 22 June at 17:00 in which he will discuss the relationship between cinema, trauma and memory and trace the role of fiction in non-fiction and fantasy in reality within the documentary genre, providing an exclusive opportunity to access insights into one of the most thought-provoking documentaries of the year. Buy tickets HERE.

Please follow the link below to read Le Fanu's article. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2ELCplMBK2QOE9ZQzhQRUJLN0E/edit?usp=sharing

or for historical background information, by John T. Sidel, the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) please follow the link below: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2ELCplMBK2QUDFMQzBoSExqdXM/edit?usp=sharing

"What it's like when money's tight" - Austerity on film

When life is tough, jobs are scarce, and money doesn’t go as far as it used to, how do people cope? With the recent release of Baz Luhrmann’s film version of The Great Gatsby, which depicts extravagant consumption prior to the Great Depression of 1930s America, there’s no better time to reflect on what it means to be ‘well-off’ or ‘poor’ in our current age of austerity.

Open City Docs Fest are thinking about what the economic decisions made by the people in power actually mean for our everyday lives. We’re showing three films that discuss how people cope with feeling the squeeze and what it’s like to come face to face with hardship: Iceland, Year Zero (Iceland), To The Wolf (Greece) and Jaywick Escapes (UK), the latter having the added bonus of super-affordable tickets starting from just £6.

Austerity is inescapable: you can’t go anywhere without reading a news story, Facebook post or Tweet about it. Certainly families and businesses are feeling the effects, with unemployment growing to 2.52 million in March according to ONS statistics. Economic crisis has been in the news for so long now that it’s hard to remember what it actually means for an economy to collapse. Iceland, Year Zero is an evocative depiction of the aftermath of the collapse of the three main Icelandic banks in 2008, which caused thousands of people to lose their jobs, their savings and their dreams. Sigorour Hallmar Magnusson and Armande Chollat-Namy's film provides a very human perspective on financial meltdown. Buy tickets HERE.

Today’s definition of austerity is primarily about constraining economic policies, coupled with the political vision that we need to get ‘back to basics’ and cut ‘frivolous’ spending. The recent Greek economic crisis is a case in point, as Greece’s high levels of national debt, in conjunction with low national income, meant that they had to accept a bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to save the country from going completely bankrupt. The bailout loan came with conditions, however, one of which was that the government had to introduce austerity measures to help balance the country’s books. Not only was the Greek economy in crisis, but life was only going to get tougher for the Greek people, as any cuts to public spending come at a price. Less public spending means less money for government-provided services such as welfare, healthcare, and education, all of which are needed more than ever when a country is in recession.

Get to grips with how austerity changes traditional ways of life forever, with our screening of To The Wolf by Christina Koutsospyrou and Aran Hughes which follows the lives of two shepherd families in a remote village high up in the Nafpaktia mountains. Combining documentary and fiction with an all-local cast, To the Wolf is both the reality and an unsettling allegory of today's Greece. Buy tickets HERE.

Sto Lyko (To the Wolf) - TRAILER from STO LYKO (TO THE WOLF) on Vimeo.

With the Greek economy as an alarming example, what’s happening closer to home? Only last week, UK Chancellor George Osborne decided to continue to cut public spending, in spite of the disapproval from the latest IMF report. Osborne’s cuts to benefits as detailed at length in the national press will affect many people across the country, and this clampdown on public spending prompts the question ‘are people’s livelihoods considered a needless expense?’ Economic recession and austerity measures affect certain areas and certain people more than others. New data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development suggests that the poor have been hit hardest by the financial crisis and cuts to welfare spending may increase inequality further. Here at Open City Docs Fest we’re looking at how people make the best of things and retain their livelihoods when times are hard. Jaywick Escapes is a moving study of what is officially Britain’s most deprived place. The Essex town of Jaywick promises sea views at bargain rents, and this film by Karen Guthrie and Nina Pope follows three newcomers who see Jaywick as a chance for a fresh start. Buy tickets HERE

Jaywick Escapes: Trailer from Karen Guthrie on Vimeo.

Through our film screenings at Open City Docs we hope to explore what austerity and recession really mean to the people who are affected by it.

"Ground Control to Hackney Picturehouse" - The International Space Orchestra has landed!

The Open City team was joined by what seemed like half of London at the Hackney Picturehouse on Wednesday night for our sold-out showing of the hilarious and heartwarming film International Space Orchestra. Nelly Ben Hayoun, the charming French director, had us in stitches describing her madcap antics in making the film about her intergalactic adventure.

After the showing we were pleased to welcome Chris Hatherill from super/collider and Oliver Wainwright from The Guardian, who led a lively Q&A session after the screening.

If you missed out this time, don’t worry! We are showing International Space Orchestra again during the festival, and you can buy tickets HERE.

Watch the trailer here:

TEASER: Ground Control: An Opera in Space, Performance in front of the World largest Windtunnel, NASA Ames Research Center from International Space Orchestra on Vimeo.

Or why not check out the other film we are screening at Hackney Picturehouse, Man for a Day, on 21 June? - buy tickets HERE.

To the festival and beyond!

"Women Who Call The Shots"

Where are all the women in film? They aren’t shortlisted at Cannes, which is going on as we write: there is only one film directed by a woman on the list of twenty in competition - Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, with her film Un Château En Italie (A Castle in Italy). And the inclusion of a single female director is an improvement on last year’s selection's gender bias, when no female directors were nominated at all. Furthermore, in the sixty-five years of the Cannes Festival, only one woman has ever won the coveted Palme D’Or award – Jane Campion, for her 1993 film The Piano. Women don’t seem to win Academy Awards for Best Director either. Only four women have ever been nominated and only one has ever won - Kathryn Bigelow, in 2009, with The Hurt Locker. It seems that all the women are in front of – not behind – the camera. And that’s something that Open City Docs Fest wants to change.

Women are rarely nominated for the top prizes, and so they rarely win. It seems like women aren’t even being allowed the chance to compete to prove their worth. Here at Open City Docs Fest, films directed by women make up just under half of the programme and what's more, several female directors’ films are contenders for awards judged by our Grand Jury, demonstrating that we know that women’s films are worthy of accolades.

Here’s just one example from each awards category:

• Grand Jury Award - Tinatin Gurchiani (The Machine That Makes Everything Disappear)
  BUY TICKETS HERE
• Emerging International Filmmaker Award - Petra Costa (Elena) BUY TICKETS HERE
• Emerging UK Filmmaker Award - Eva Weber (Black Out) BUY TICKETS HERE

The exclusion of female directors from the top spots means a lack of female role models in the public eye to which women can relate, which in turn means less inspiration for women to start directing films themselves. The film industry being so male-dominated and rife with reports of sexism and discrimination, it’s no wonder women are being intimidated from picking up the megaphone and clapperboard. We’ve recognised the need to allow female directors a chance to share their knowledge with and inspire upcoming filmmakers, and so we are privileged to have the award-winning directors Molly Dineen and Katerina Cizek hosting workshops and teaching master classes.

For Molly's master class Portraits of Britain BUY TICKETS HERE.
For Katerina's class Digital Documentary in the 21st Century BUY TICKETS HERE.

From the audience’s perspective, without female directors we would miss out on the vast array of creative talents that women have to offer. Not only would we miss out on explorations of alternative subject matter from the traditional fare of action movies and rom-coms but also we’ll miss the unique perspectives and angles that female directors can provide. Discouraging people with a passion for directing means we could be discouraging the next Maya Deren, Agnes Varda, Lucy Walker or Nadine Labaki. With a programme including over thirty female directors’ films featuring on a variety of strands, Open City Docs Fest provides evidence that first, female directors are incredibly talented (which goes without saying) and second, they can tackle any subject and aren’t limited to traditionally feminine film genres.

Taking just one example from each strand:

• City Strand - Caroline Bâcle (Lost Rivers) BUY TICKETS HERE
• Science Frictions - Fran Robertson (Challenging Behaviours) BUY TICKETS HERE
• Hybrid Forms - Oonagh Kearney (Wonder House) BUY TICKETS HERE
• World Visions - Penny Lane (Our Nixon) BUY TICKETS HERE
• Theatre of the Oppressed - Salomé Lamas (No Man’s Land) BUY TICKETS HERE
• Music Docs - Nelly Ben Hayoun (International Space Orchestra) BUY TICKETS HERE

We also have to remember that the film industry is notorious for its sexist film stereotypes and the objectification of women – both of which could be tackled by having more female directors. Film is also an excellent way of visually displaying the struggles that women face worldwide every day. Films such as Solar Mamas by Mona Eldaiet and Jehane Noujaim, and Salma by Kim Longinotto show a new perspective on issues such as women’s rights to education and economic empowerment. Longinotto, Eldaiet and Noujaim all work to show women’s strength in the face of adversity, putting paid to tired film clichés such as ‘the damsel in distress’.

For tickets to Solar Mamas click HERE
For tickets to Salma click HERE

Open City Docs Fest is trying to redress the gender inequality in the film industry and give female directors the recognition and airtime they deserve. We’d love for you to come and join us in celebrating the women who call the shots!

"Drumroll, please!" Our festival is launched

Open City Docs Fest revealed its programme for this year's festival at its press launch at the Bloomsbury Theatre last week. Our extensive programme of over 130 films, workshops, master classes and panel discussions is now available online.
We showed our trailer for the festival for the first time:


Open City Docs Fest 2013 - Festival Trailer from MyStreet Films on Vimeo.

to over fifty guests, along with the trailers of three films we are particularly proud of being able to show this year – our Opening Gala film The 12 O’Clock Boys,


12 O'Clock Boys-Trailer from Thomas Niles on Vimeo.

our Closing Gala film Sofia’s Last Ambulance,


Sofia's Last Ambulance from Nukleus film (Croatia) on Vimeo.

and a film tipped to be the festival’s major talking-point The Act of Killing.


THE ACT OF KILLING - Trailer 2013 from Final Cut for Real on Vimeo.

Festival Director Michael Stewart and Communications Director Paul Drury introduced the trailers, while guests sipped on glasses of prosecco or G&Ts thanks to Beefeater Gin and nibbled on delicious summer rolls from Vietnamese kitchen Banh Mi 11

Open City Docs Fest is London’s Global Documentary Festival - devoted to exploring the world we live in through the vision of documentary film.

Spanning four-days (20-23 June 2013), this year’s Open City Docs programme of 100+ films includes world premieres, exceptional master classes and a grand jury of award-winning directors, producers and authors. The festival takes place at numerous venues across London including the Open City Docs’ special cinema tent, The Bloomsbury Theatre, The Hackney Picturehouse, and venues around University College London campus.

Open City Docs Fest nurtures the next generation of filmmakers by running workshops and screenings throughout the year across London, and is highly accessible - tickets start from just £6.

We’d like to thank the Open City staff, Aine Cassidy for her brilliant design work, Simon Ball for our brilliant trailer, the volunteers, and of course everyone who came for making the event such a success.