A DAY AT THE FESTIVAL: SEPTEMBER 17TH

On Tuesday, viewers will be treated to three more blocks of international competition.

  1. IC 6 will show an interesting couple: a full-length Midnight Family and a short Briefing. The first one tells the story of the Ochoa family that runs a for-profit ambulance in Mexico City. Luke Lorentzen, film director: «With Midnight Family I spent over 80 nights sleeping, eating, and essentially living in the ambulance with the Ochoas. I was of course there for the exciting stuff, but the trust really builds when it’s 6:00 AM, we’re parked on a dark street corner, nothing is happening, and for some reason I haven’t gone home yet.» Filip Drzewiecki’s The Briefing portrays young doctors who for the first time are exposed to psychological aspects of working at a hospital.
  2. Coming up next is IC 7. And again about midnight: Midnight Traveler records the experience of wandering of an Afghan family in exile. Extremists wanted to kill Hassan Fazili in his homeland, while Europe shows the refugees its ungainly underside. According to the director, it was hard to make the film because of contradicting roles of an artist and a father: «As a filmmaker, I feel I must document some of the problems in the world so that future generations. As a father and a family member, sometimes think that I’ve done wrong.» All Inclusive, a short film, shows a completely different style of travel: this is a witty sketch about cruise-ship travellers. Where are they headed? Is it a modern ark, a destination point of earthly wanderings?
  3. IC 8 screenings are dedicated to our furry friends. A feature-length film Los Reyes tells a story of two dogs living in a Chilean skatepark. One of the film directors, Bettina Perut, saw more than she expected in the lives of animals: «The film taught us that people are not the centre of the Earth. We’ve got used to thinking this way, but this is wrong. When we found those dogs in the park, we got our perspective that I was looking for.» In the short film All Cats Are Grey In The Dark, its lonely protagonist gives all his love to Katjuscha and Marmalade, two British Shorthairs, who bask in this unusual human attention.

National competition programme includes:

  1. NC 4 featuring three films about older characters. The Last Year tells a story of the final year in the life of Galina Anisimova, a theatre actress. The Fourth Question is an impromptu film about Lev who lost his close ones and lust for life and his coeval friend who does not lose his ability to be amazed. Lonely Hearts is about aged writers of letters to the Lonely Hearts Club.
  2. Margarita Zakharova’s Moscow Is Like a Dream follows a couple of lovers who find out they are starting to feel distant and try to sort it out.

 

Chantal Akerman’s retrospective show will include the screening of Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, arguably her best-known film. Katerina Beloglazova, Seance journal: «In Jeanne Dielman…, Akerman fine-tunes the viewers’ sight and hearing to a supersensitive mode, while Delphine Seyrig brings across her character’s inner hesitations – hidden even from herself – with a single movement of a potato peeler.»

 

The Collapse of Socialism programme is followed up by a double screening. Andreas Goldstein’s The Communist is a personal recollection of the GDR through the figure of his father who was one of the last ministers of culture and underwent a personal downfall and a change of beliefs. Petra Tschörtner’s Berlin – Prenzlauer Berg captures the anticipation of changes and was shot in 1990, a month before the currency union between the FRG and GDR was introduced.

 

Aurora cinema will host a third block of Nordic Avant-Garde. Mika Taanila will present the programme whose films span from the 1950s to our time.

 

Another programme author, Thorbjorg Jonsdottir, a video artist from Iceland, will hold a free master class in the St Petersburg School of New Cinema. Her films navigate between ethnography and abstract formalism, exploring preternatural states where oral mythology and landscape collide.

In the evening, there will be re-runs of the secondthird and fourth competition blocks. Also, there will be re-runs of the second and third screenings of national documentary competition and of the first block of the In Silico experimental competition.