photo, courtesy of Visions du Réel 2009
Nyon film festival 2009
by Jillian Hudson
“Spaghetti alle Vongole” was an excellent first attempt for director Lila Ribi. The camera captures her father’s severe depression and his difficulty in communicating with his daughter. Ribi manages to convey her feelings of disappointment and sadness at the lack of a father during her childhood as well as her desperation to establish a relationship with him now.
The sadness and the frustration are palpable in the intimate scenes in her father’s kitchen where it’s just a girl asking her father to let her in to his life. It was a very brave move for Ribi to take on a project that hit so close to home. If her father had been willing she could have taken the story even further.
photo courtesy of Visions du Réel 2009
Nyon film festival 2009
by Jillian Hudson
Wang Hao’s “Pediatrics Department” raises many interesting questions abut Chinese public hospitals and the medical system as a whole. Throughout the two hours that Hao allows us look into the professional lives of the doctors and nurses of the pediatric unit the audience has a chance to relate to the characters and sympathize with their troubles.
Nyon Film Festival 2009
Jared Bloch
Sergiy Bukovsky’s, “The Living,” is a 75 minute indictment of the methodological impoverishment and starvation imposed on Ukrainian “kulaks” by the Soviet State in the 1930′s.
The film presents a chronological accounting, via diplomatic letters, of the excruciatingly purposeful suffering inflicted on Ukranian peasants, in the form of farm collectivization.
"I'm afraid to remember those times". Photo courtesy of Visions du Réel Film Festival
The anger and sadness in the faces of those who lived through this tragedy is almost unbearable to look at as they describe in minute detail their ordeal. “I’m afraid to think about, let alone remember those times,” one interviewee tells the camera.
photo, courtesy of Visions du Réel 2009
Nyon film festival 2009
by Jillian Hudson
Yu Guangyi’s documentary “Survival Song” is a shockingly candid view into the lives of a Chinese working class family who has been forced to live in poverty and misery in the name of a new and modern China.
photo provided by Visions du Reel 2009
photo provided by Visions du Reel 2009
Nyon film festival 2009
by Jillian Hudson
“Cash and Marry” is the humorous portrayal of a man’s search for an EU (European Union) bride at all costs. Director and main character Georgiev Atanas calls upon his Bosnian friend Marko who is currently living in Vienna, Austria to help him find a bride who will give him papers to live and work in the EU.
Nyon Film Festival 2009
Jared Bloch
Danny Chanoch, courtesy of Visions du Réel Film Festival
Moshe Zimmerman’s, Pizza in Auschwitz is a disturbingly beautiful treatise on what human beings make of pain and suffering, how human beings have the capacity to transform horror into something altogether comprehensible.
Born in Lithuania, Danny Chanoch is a holocaust survivor and Isreali citizen. He has convinced his two adult children to visit his childhood home and the sites of his multiple incarcerations in Poland. The trip for the elder Chanoch is a chance to reclaim a childhood which, as his daughter offers in one of many heated family discussions along the way, was stolen from him in the most cruel way.
Election night coverage back in the UK in 1997 was so delightfully British. Whatever side of the political fence you were on, anyone who stayed up late to watch the results couldn’t have failed to be amused. Amongst the other candidates a seven foot transvestite candidate, “Miss Money Penny’s Glamorous One Party”, towered over the others as the returning officer announced the results. She/he wasn’t the only quirky candidate that night, there were others represented up and down the country.
So when I was invited by an American to go to a U.S election watching party in Geneva on Tuesday night, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would there be anything equally surreal, would it be momentous, would it be serious, who would be there?
Fashion and fun at the start
Suzy
Last night was by far the best of the week. Arriving early we went off to La Ruche where I wanted to watch my friend in a circus show. Ecole Atelier Shanju is a circus/horse riding/theatre school based in Ecublens, and they put on a fantastic spectacle at 4pm yesterday in the circus part of the Paleo. Juggling whilst standing on horses, drumming, balancing off hoops and acting, they pulled off an impressive show in the late afternoon heat.
Suzy
My new red Hunter wellies finally got to see some real festival weather. After losing my flats into the mud last year, I decided to acquire some real glastonbury style footwear, but had no chance to sport them due to the heat until yesterday. We arrived under threatening clouds at around 7pm, and sure enough the heavens opened around 8.30. We danced to a Brazilian drumming band in the Dome called Olodum, which was quite a spectacle of crazy hairstyles, hip shaking, giant drums, and classics such as “No Woman No Cry” sung in Portuguese. The Dome was packed, an unusual sight as the Village du Monde bands usually have trouble filling the tent, however I think its fair to say that we haven’t come across one single bad band in the Dome this year.
Suzy
Friday night at the Paleo always has certain characteristics, such as first timers relaxing after a long week of work, the lack of sleep taking its toll on the campers, the wildness and the heat all combine, and we realise that we are over halfway through the week. What I’m trying to say is that on Friday nights, we party, hard.