Saturday, September 27, 2008

The filmmaker José Luis Guerín at the Princeton Documentary Film Festival 2008

The "Princeton Documentary Festival", called in this edition "Real Stories: Fact and Fiction in the Documentary", will be celebrated in October 2 - 4, on East Pyne 010, Princeton University. All films are in original language with English subtitles and the screenings are free and open to the public. The program is:

Thursday, October 2:

4:30 pm, "The Work of the Real". Talk by Consuelo Lins.

7:00 pm, "Jogo de cena / Playing", by Eduardo Coutinho, Brazil, 2007, 103 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles. An ad in the Rio newspaper brings in women from all walks of life to talk about their experiences, but are they telling the truth? Commentary by Maite Conde (Columbia University).

Friday, October 3:

2:00 pm, "Developing Films of Underdevelopment". Talk by filmmaker Luis Ospina.

2:30 pm, "Agarrando pueblo / The vampires of poverty", by Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo, Colombia, 1978, 28 min. In Spanish with English subtitles. A team of committed Colombian filmmakers goes out on the streets of Cali to make a searing exposé of the Colombian underclass for German TV–or is it exploitation? Commentary by Jens Andermann (Birkbeck College).

4:30 pm, "La desazón suprema: Retrato incesante de Fernando Vallejo / The supreme uneasiness: Incessant portrait of Fernando Vallejo", by Luis Ospina, Colombia, 2003, 90 min. In Spanish with English subtitles. Fernando Vallejo, the great Colombian novelist, invites filmmaker Ospina into his home for an unsparing self-portrait. Together, they unravel the writer's bitter love-hate relationship with his native country, which is at the creative root of an astonishing autobiographical oeuvre. Commentary by Rubén Gallo (Princeton University).

Saturday, October 4:

10:00 am, "La guerre d'un seul homme / One man's war", by Edgardo Cozarinsky, France, 1981, 105 min. The war-time diaries of writer Karl Junger, sensitive observer of human behavior and -–at the same time— military governor of Nazi-occupied Paris, serve as a departure for Cozarinsky’s enthralling reflection on personal responsibility and collective guilt. Made in exile, this remains a groundbreaking work of Latin American documentary. Commentary by Gabriela Nouzeilles (Princeton University).

1:30 pm, "Public lies, private truths". Talk by filmmaker Edgardo Cozarinsky.

3:00 pm, "Unas fotos en la ciudad de Sylvia / Photos in the city of Sylvia", by José Luis Guerín, Spain, 2007, 67 min. The quest to find a young woman met long ago in a foreign city allows Guerín to virtually reinvent the possibilities of cinema by a paradoxical process of subtraction: no movement, only photographs, and no sound, only words written on the screen. The result -a new kind of literature according to the filmmaker- is absolutely spellbinding. Discussion with José Luis Guerín. Commentary by Eduardo Cadava (Princeton University).

No comments: