Szczecin European Film Festival 2017: 22.10.2017, Sunday, 20:10
Kino Zamek, Korsarzy 34 (where is that?)
Blok tematyczny: The European Competition '17
“Faber Navalis” is Latin for “boatbuilder.” The film might seem to be about the restoration of a wooden ship, but the actual subject is the ecstatic state of mind of the shipwright. An Italian researcher in maritime ethnography decides to learn the art of traditional boatbuilding in order to understand the intangible knowledge hidden behind the construction of a wooden ship. This film is an extraordinary combination of aesthetics and ethnography.
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Constantinos Christou created the film while studying in the UK via the Erasmus Exchange program. The piece is closely connected with the incredibly important philosophical idea of time. The young author wanted to show how time passes when you are having the time of your life. The film's important virtues are beautiful cinematography and wonderful, hypnotising music, which make it a real feast both image- and sound-wise.
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Adrienne goes back to Poland, where she was born, to see her grandmother and ask her family about the still relatively recent times of communism. In her aunt and uncle’s cosy kitchen she will learn that the spirits of communism are not the only ones to haunt Polish immigrants, and that there are many unexpected and old means of facing them. This extraordinary animation merges the real and surreal worlds in a humoristic way. As it turns out, withcraft and fortune-telling are still deeply entrenched in today's Poland.
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In December 2011, a security guard was killed by a pack of stray dogs prowling in a poor neighbourhood, in the Bogota suburbs. This tragic news inspired the Columbian director to make a one-of-a-kind animated film, taking on weighty issues of body, wildness, and territory. The film reminds one of a dark, disturbing thriller. The howl of hungry dogs, heard in the background, becomes a terrifying leitmotif of the whole picture.
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A poetic documentary about a Roma family that spends its summers in the Latvian woods, picking berries to make a living. While harvesting the fruit of the forest, they reflect on their identity as a group by sharing incredible ghost stories. Surrounded by existential questions on how to balance the future and the past, traditions and modern life, this metaphysical documentary points out their struggle for identity as a journey between night and day, and vice versa.
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An intimate story about a father-daughter relationship, told in nine chapters. Polish director Sylwia Rosak skilfully captures the way human life gets divided into fragments. Each one is a metaphorical memory from early childhood, throughout puberty, and adult life. The father is an important character in the film, as the one whose memory is very vivid in the protagonist's mind, and who influences her life to this day.
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Walt Disney died 50 years ago. But to this day, millions of children grow up with the films he produced. The legendary director is still seen as the embodiment of the American Dream. A student writing his bachelor thesis remembers his childhood fascination with the USA. He lost his mother at an early age and always identified with Disney's orphan characters. But by now, a different kind of film has caught his attention: amateur films, “home movies.” He seeks the “real” America in these images. The film is an amazing essayistic “stream of consciousness.”
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