Eyes On...World Documentaries at Open City

Two sons investigate the disappearance of their railway policeman father in the Phillipines.  Inner-city Memphis student-footballers overcome massive odds to win the playoffs for the first time in 110 years. Media, liberty and corporate incest in America. Breaking down the walls in Vietnam's independent music scene.  The ghost of a hurricane-annihilated Cuban fishing village.

These are just some of the stories in our World Visions strand at Open City. Enquiry into the world beyond our geographical borders raises hard questions, about ourselves, the way we live and allows us to question and wonder at culture.

What do we do, see and hear?..When we have Punk In Africa?  As a scene that never dances far from its political roots, with movements in every country that still run on grassroots organisation - punk at its best is still made by angry youths who tear a hole in the wall with three chords. Director Keith Jones tries to lift a lid on it with his doc on the scene.

                                                            Punk In Africa
After the film premiere there will be a panel discussion hosted by South African ethnomusicologist Dr. Angela Impey (SOAS) featuring co-director Keith Jones as well as 1980s South African punk scene veterans Matthew Temple (Four Horsemen, Matsuli Music) and Sean Roe (Domestic Servants, Pantsulas). Michael Flek from the pioneering Durban bands Wild Youth and Gay Marines will also be in attendance. Buy tickets here now.

Beyond ideas of the nation state, we're proud to bring you the UK Premiere of  'Evolution of Violence', a look at hell on earth in Guatelmala. Despite its post civil war status, occasions of brutality are normalized by communities; villagers fight for a cemetery after a massacre, murder and violence as everyday occurrence. Fritz Ofner brings us a street-level view through the eyes of those who live within it. Tickets here.

Evolution of Violence, Fritz Ofner / 2011 / Austria / 77’

 

 

Simone Rapisarda Casanova   2011 / Canada, Cuba, Italy / 71

"What a boring shot of the old lady grinding coffee," says an old woman with coffee beans.
Director Simon Casanova's p.o.v dream-like reverie is about the final days prior to the disappearance of a whole village in Cuba. With Casanova as a director very much in the picture, who makes no disguise of his filming, it lies between documentary, anthropology and reverie. This is a cinematic poem that shows the village of Juan Antonio, on the northeastern coast before its destruction less than a month after the shooting wrapped.
 Open City is proud to show this visual letter, as a unique and sensitive take on lives in Castro's domain.

Tickets await your dormant hands here.