RE: VERZIO Documentary Film Series

Each fall, Budapest is the site of Verzio, an excellent human rights film festival that brings to the screen dozens of human rights documentaries from dozens of countries around the world. The 2008 Verzio Festival included more than 50 films from over 27 countries -- and still, this leaves out many worthy films that do not make the final selection.

Fortunately for us, the Verzio organizers have introduced a spring film series to help fill the gap. The 2009 RE: VERZIO Documentary Film Series showcases seven films --  four audience favorites at the 2008 festival, and three new films that were not shown at the fall festival.

The first film in the RE: VERZIO Series is Anna, 7 Years on the Frontline, winner of the Audience Award at the 2008 Verzio Festival. The film (which we were able to see back in November) is a compelling portrait of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who became well known for her passionate commitment to reporting on the conflict in Chechnya, and whose October 2006 murder remains unsolved. The documentary includes interviews with Politkovskaya's colleagues and friends, as well as many conversations with the journalist herself, as she describes her work, its dangers and challenges, and what drives her to keep pressing on. 

Anna, 7 Years on the Frontline will be shown Wednesday, April 1, at 6pm, at the OSA Archivum, Arany János u. 32., (in the 5th district near Arany János metro stop). 

All films in the RE:VERZIO Series are shown in the original language with English subtitles.  

The series continues with a film every week for the next seven weeks.  To see the full schedule, keep reading below.

Download the RE:VERZIO announcement and schedule in PDF

RE: VERZIO Documentary Film Series
April-May 2009
OSA Archivum, Galeria Centralis
Budapest V, Arany János u. 32.

The Open Society Archivum and Verzio Film Fest present 7 outstanding documentaries in the 2009 spring film series. Four of the selected documentaries have been the favorites of Verzio 5 International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival audiences in 2008, while three outstanding creative documentaries will be submission premiers.

Location: OSA Archivum, Galeria Centralis Budapest V, Arany János u. 32.
Films are screened in original language AND English subtitles.
Admission free.

Films:
Anna, 7 Years on the Frontline
Brides of Allah / Sahida
For God, Tsar and Fatherland
The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World
Bloody Cartoons
Bomb Harvest
Jerusalem Is Proud to Present

VERZIO FAVORITES
A selection of four most viewed documentaries from the Main Program of Verzio 5 International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival.

AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER IN 2008
WEDNESDAY, April 1, 6 PM

Anna, 7 Years on the Frontline
Masha Novikova / Netherlands / 2008 / 78 min / Russian

This film is about Anna Politkovskaya, Russian journalist who won international recognition for reporting work on the conflict in Chechnya in which she sought to expose human rights abuses. She spent seven years on the frontline, often in extremely dangerous situations. Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in Moscow on October 7, 2006. This film is about a woman who felt very lonely, but could never stop doing what she did. To understand Anna's personality, her work and duties, as much as her fears and feeling of loneliness, we meet her friends and colleagues who stood by her during hard times. Galina Musaliyeva shared a room with Anna in the editorial office of Novaya Gazeta for the last seven years. Lidia Yusupova is a lawyer from Grozny searching for the lost people in Chechnya. Svetlana Gannushkina, Chairman of the Committee "Civil Assistance" and a Board Member of Memorial Human Rights Center, has also worked with Anna helping fugitives and emigrants from the former Soviet Union republics. Vyacheslav Izmailov, another colleague of Anna from Novaya Gazeta, started his own investigations, trying to find out who killed Anna.

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TUESDAY, April 7, 6 PM

Brides of Allah / Sahida
Natalie Assouline / Israel / 2008 / 76 min / Hebrew & Arabic

A poignant chronicle of the lives of women serving time in prison for involvement in terrorist attacks in Israel. Filmed over the course of two years, the film strives to uncover the motivations behind the actions of these women. We share their daily prison lives, giving birth, meeting families, attending classes, and gossiping about clothes. One woman coyly describes wanting to blow up a hospital which treated her for severe burns following a kitchen accident, even though the Israeli doctors were kind. Another cuddles her son and says she wanted to destroy an Israeli kindergarten. Yet another, a mother of five, is serving three life terms for transporting male suicide bomber, who is told killed pregnant women but shows no signs of retraction. We hear of religious ideology, but also of discrimination and despair in the world these women come from. A journey into the world where the greatest cruelty lurks beneath the most striking beauty, where a lullaby whispered lovingly in a baby's ear echoes with the sting of hatred, and where compassion and cold blooded disdain live together behind the same penetrating eyes. A moving film full of contradictions.

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TUESDAY, April 14, 6 PM

For God, Tsar and Fatherland
Nino Kirtadze / Russia / 2007 / 53min / Russian

Mikhail Morozov is a Russian patriot, good Christian and successful businessman. Morozov is a typical exponent of the powerful in contemporary Russia, having political connections, money, and influence. He runs a rehabilitation center in Durakovo - the “Village of Fools” - 100 km southwest of Moscow. People come here from all over Russia to “find themselves.” When they join the community, the new residents abandon all their former rights and agree to obey their leader’s strict rules, hoping to enrich their spiritual lives. Three moral pillars serve as the guiding principles at Durakovo: God, tsar, and fatherland. “What we have here is a society that respects the vertical of power, this is what our country needs most of all,” says Morozov quoting his idol Vladimir Putin. Purposefully restrained, yet cunningly subversive, the film provides a chilling glimpse of the Russian nationalist ideology on the rise.

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TUESDAY, April 21, 6 PM

The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World
Weijun Chen / UK & Netherlands & Denmark / 2008 / 80 min / Mandarin

With an official plaque to prove it, The West Lake Restaurant in Changsha, China holds the title of the world's largest restaurant. With a staff of nearly 1000 - including 300 chefs - and 5000 seats, West Lake is a combination mini-theme park and eatery, featuring live entertainment and landscaped pools and pavilions. Overseeing the enterprise is its savvy and energetic owner, Qin Linzi, who uses military efficiency and martial songs to motivate her employees. "Solidarity equals strength, strength is iron, strength is steel," they sing listlessly, while Mrs Qin enthusiastically leads from the front, zealously promulgating her own version of Chinese socialism. Her customers are newly wealthy Chinese busy throwing big budget banquets - a wedding, a parent’s seventieth birthday and a baby’s one month welcome party. Outside the walls of the restaurant we also meet the lower classes who make all of this wealth possible. The girls from poor families with little choice but to work cheap, especially if, as one of the protagonists casually mentions, her father was jailed because she was a second child. The contradictions of this world are plentiful yet glibly accepted by all involved. A fascinating microcosm of contemporary China.

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VERZIO SUBMISSION SELECTION
The three documentaries in this group are a selection from the several hundred submitted films that were not included in the Main Program due to thematic and quantity restrictions. These excellent award winning social documentaries however are a must see for everyone interested in creative, critical documentary cinema.

TUESDAY, April 28, 6 PM

Bloody Cartoons
Karsten Kjaer / Denmark / 2007 / 53 min / Danish, English

When in September 2005 the Danish newspaper Jyllands–Posten published a series of caricatures of the prophet Mohammed, it sparked unprecedented protests around the Muslim world. The demonstrations were so intense and so well organized that it led to questions as to whether they were really a spontaneous expression of Muslim anger. Danish investigative journalist and documentary maker Karsten Kjaer attempted to find out who could have had an interest in the protests spreading so far and an escalation of hatred towards the West. He conducted dozens of interviews in an attempt to untangle the web of events which followed the publishing of the cartoons; he spoke to religious leaders responsible for instigating violence, demonstrators who had set embassies on fire, journalists and newspaper publishers. Kjaer visited Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Turkey and Qatar, often posing the question of where the border of free speech, one of the pillars of democracy, lies. Bloody Cartoons goes far beyond reaction to the caricatures. It examines the source of differing values, misunderstanding and mutual intolerance – especially when backed by manipulated information and deliberately abused by people.

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TUESDAY, May 5, 6 PM

Bomb Harvest
Kim Mordaunt / Laos, Australia / 2007 / 88 min / English, Lao

From 1964 to 1973, the United States dropped a planeload of cluster bombs (about 100 per sortie) onto Laos every eight minutes, day and night — the equivalent of more than half a ton of bombs for every man, woman, and child. Many of these bombs still litter the Laotian landscape and remain live, rendering the largely poor, rural population vulnerable to explosions 25 years after the CIA-funded secret war has ended. Filmmaker Kim Mordaunt and producer Sylvia Wilczynski follow Australian Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) technician Laith Stevens as he trains young Laotians to become certified bomb technicians themselves, learning to recognize and neutralize the estimated 30 percent of unexploded ordnance (UXO) still lying in wait. As these young technicians learn their new trade, we meet the villagers haunted by the effects of this illegal war and encounter the new economy that prizes UXO for its scrap metal value.

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TUESDAY, May 12, 6 PM

Jerusalem Is Proud to Present
Nitzan Gilady / Israel / 2007 / 82 min / Hebrew

In the summer of 2006, Jerusalem was supposed to host the World Pride festival for the first time in its history and this was meant to culminate in a gay pride parade. The festival, however, met with enormous resistance from representatives of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religious communities. This documentary film shows the determination and bravery of the parade's organizers from the Open House Association. For them, in an escalating atmosphere of homophobia and in the face of threats and violence, holding the march became something a lot more fundamental than just freely expressing their opinion. Director Nitzan Gilady gives us a unique view of preparations for a festival celebrating tolerance in conservative society.

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