The International Community Film Festival 2008

* * * Please note revised times for screenings * * *

The second International Community Film Festival to be held at The University of Northampton features a selection from over 100 films sent to us from twenty countries. Several films included in the opening night present issues of conflict, peace and violence. They remind us of an ongoing cycle of terror, aggression and dogma that 9/11 is an occasion to commemorate. But the stories selected by our film-makers are primarily concerned with the people behind the headlines, and by the work that they are undertaking to improve their community-life. The directors find ugliness and beauty; a sense of visual poetry often reminds us of compassionate and redeeming human qualities. A sense of hope, based in collective action, comes through more powerfully than the familiar portraits of tragic situations and political deadlock. We find evidence that individuals and community groups are taking up the camera rather than the gun as the best tool to fight for a better world. One example of new media being used to reflect and reform the world is the Network of Community Video Units in India: “We will show our lanes, our slums and our issues. We will not show our problems, we will show our struggles and our victories … You will get information about our slums. It will have your words, your voices, which we will present through Hamari Awaaz (Our Voice).” We hope you enjoy the films presented at the ICFF 2008 launch event. (Prof Ian McCormick)

Race and Diversity/ War and Conflict

1pm – 4 pm on Thurs 25th Sept; The Avenue Cinema

13:00	Red Terror	Joel Jonsson	Sweden	15:00
13:15	Lights	Reem Al Ghazzi	Syria	4:00
13:19	Tuesday at the Grand	Chris Taylor	UK	10:00
13:30	Little Babel	Idhebor Kagho Crowther	Nigeria	11:00
13:42	Te Whare	Richard Green	Aotearoa (NZ)	31:00
14:15	Survivor	Nicole Volavka	UK	14:00
14:30	Something Invisible	Ryuichi Hiraishi	Japan	37:00
15:08	Perceptions	Ali M. Ali	Nigeria	10:24
15:19	Furrows -  The Pain of Memory	Nawafeth Youth Forum/zaLa	Palestine and Italy	24:30

13:00

Red Terror

Joel Jonsson

Sweden

15:00

Red Terror tells the story of an Ethiopian family in the 1975 revolution. During the time of the Red Terror the Ethiopian army forced every first born male to join the battle against the rebellious liberation front. Scared of the ruthless dictatorship Mahari sends his son Alemu away to hide from the military forces. But when the army arrives and finds the son gone, they take Mahari instead; leaving behind his wife and his younger son Tatek.

Unable to bear this burden, Alemu trades himself for his father and joins the army while Mahari reunites with his family. In a twist of fate the army returns to the village presenting the dead body of Alemu to the village, to make clear how they handle disobedience. This leaves Mahari with a tough decision to make.

http://www.mandy.com/1/film3.cfm?id=11007

13:15

Lights

Reem Al Ghazzi

Syria

4:00

It’s about a place without its basic needs of living,

But it’s also about People with hope and courage.

A whole community live in a hard condition, and get used to it,

But what about their future; their children?

It’s about a place where there is no electricity but it is full of Lights …

It has its own kind of Light.

13:19

Tuesday at the Grand

Chris Taylor

UK

10:00

'Tuesday at the Grand' illustrates the personal traumas and struggles faced by young asylum-seekers in and around the complex of a successful hotel.

This setting infused the film with a familiarity that provided a framework to then explore issues that may be alien to British citizens.

By contrasting the comfort of the British workers with the issues faced by the young people 'Tuesday at the Grand' is able to subtly help its audience to recognise that these troubles are encountered on their own doorstep and not simply in the headlines.

http://www.superkrush.com/community/community-tuesday-at-the-grand.php

13:30

Little Babel

Idhebor Kagho Crowther

Nigeria

11:00

Hot spot social drama about 4 young and easy living Southerners who find themselves in the cultural melting pot, Jos in the middle of 2001. Not familiar with the local dialect (Hausa) they get mixed up in a fight with a local suya seller, which stemmed from a controversial pun on halla. Confusing the word to mean a derogatory attack on his faith, the suya seller takes offence and moves in for the kill, fanning the flames for an ethnic/religious conflict. The film gives an insight of what can easily give birth to ethnic crises in this part of the world and it is due to these little misunderstandings, which can easily be avoided, if we give way to peace to prevail.

13:42

Te Whare

Richard Green

Aotearoa (NZ)

31:00

This parable explores the relationship of Tangata Whenua (people of the land - Maori) and Europeans who signed The Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 confirming Maori Tino Rangatiratanga (Sovereignty) and Crown Governance. Te Whare sees Hone opening his home to his friend Richard who has just broken up with his girlfriend and need a place to stay. Initially the relationship is positive, but slowly Richard invites his own friends to come to the house and by film's end Hone finds himself on the couch - a guest in his own home. The film parallels the experience of Maori and many other indigenous peoples who have experienced the devastation of colonization.

14:15

Survivor

Nicole Volavka

UK

14:00

What happens when a Rwandan genocide survivor meets a young man from Darfur? This is a tale of a friendship made on fragile emotional grounds. A subtle treatment of a complex subject, set in the world of London’s night cleaners. Survivor is based upon the Director’s experiences living in Rwanda whilst working on the feature film Shooting Dogs…

14:30

Something Invisible

Ryuichi Hiraishi

Japan

37:00

About 4 months before the atomic bomb, there was the last ground battle between Japan and the US/UK. It was the battle of Okinawa. Yomitan village in Okinawa was where the US soldiers first landed for the battle. In this village there is a cave called Chibi-chili-Gama. 143 civilians were in the cave to protect them from the bombing. For a long time after the war, the survivors had been silent about what happened in the cave. It had been a taboo in this community. This document tells the story of what happened in the cave, how it happened, and why it happened.

15:08

Perceptions

Ali M. Ali

Nigeria

10:24

Nigeria, a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society has three major ethnic groups; Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. These three ethnic groups characterize the three major regions of the country (North, East and West), thus defining the behaviours and outlooks of the life of the people. The diversities of these three languages has made it possible for each to have its own perceptions about the others thereby creating a mixture of perceptions that is very important in defining the picture and story of the Nigerian nationhood and the struggle of its people to understand their differences for better co-existence and respect for each other.

15:19

Furrows -  The Pain of Memory

Nawafeth Youth Forum/zaLa

Palestine and Italy

24:30

Furrows on an old people’s face. Furrows on the fields.

Wounds. Maybe fertile.

Or maybe just carrying the weight of memory – that is, in Palestine, sometime oppressive. Memory that shapes a public, sometimes obsessive, victim’s identity.

We’ve searched for a different way to listen.

We were looking for histories, not History.

In a village in which nearly the entire population is formed by refugees, a community film crew’s job is to listen, to save, to challenge collective memory.

In a country in which memory is a soldier in the conflict, sharing memories can be a step in a path toward peace.

Thursday 2^nd October 2008

16.00-17.42 @ The Avenue Cinema

16:00	Brad: One More Night on the Barricades	Miguel Castro	Brazil	55:00 Boardroom
16:00	Trouble Sleeping	Robert Rae	UK	1:42:00

16:00

Brad: One More Night on the Barricades

Miguel Castro

Brazil

55:00 Boardroom

When Mexican paramilitary forces shot Brad Will in the chest (27^th October 2006), killing him, his camera fell from his hands. But it didn't stop recording. It continued moving from hand to hand, telling Brad's story, as well as the story of the movement of movements that he was a part of. From the squats of New York to the forests of Oregon, from the anti-globalization protests in Seattle, Prague, Quebec to the popular uprising in Oaxaca, Brad's camera paints us a picture of what his life was about, and what so many of his friends continue to struggle for.

16:00

Trouble Sleeping

Robert Rae

UK

1:42.00

Trouble Sleeping was the brainchild of Robert Rae, artistic director of the Edinburgh Theatre Workshop. ‘It was an opportunity to tell a story from their perspective,’ he said. ‘For refugees escaping political persecution, the fact they are political makes them committed to where they come from. To go into a strange world and a strange culture is tough.’ Rae hand-picked a team of writers with direct experience of the issues facing refugees in Scotland’s capital, including Edinburgh-based Palestinian playwright Ghazi Hussein. ‘We listened to each other’s stories and made them into a fairly coherent, complex narrative,’ Rae explained.

One character has been refused asylum so turns to a woman friend for help - although if she does help him her own life will be ruined. It also features an Iranian who poses as a gay man in order to claim refugee status while disguising the fact from his Iranian friends that he really is a homosexual. ‘Although it is fictionalised, everything is true and the individual refugees are often playing their own stories,’ says Rae. ‘You can have a legitimate claim to asylum but through lack of communication skills you can find yourself being deported. ‘Security forces say on their websites that in many situations if they can’t deport someone because they have no evidence then they will do it on the basis of non-compliance. ‘So people coming here are faced with a really complex legal challenge in a different language and documents written with a different script. And they have to try to represent what happened to them. I hope people see the film and look at the world through their eyes.’

Producer Eddie Dick believes Trouble Sleeping is a wake-up call to people who are hostile towards asylum seekers and to politicians seeking to grant longer detention powers to the police. ‘How can we sleep soundly unless we treat these people equitably and fairly?’ he asked. ‘It is something urgent for us to deal with on a human level, not in terms of extending detention to 42 days or charging people when they are not even allowed to know the charge against them.’

Rae persuaded professional actors Gary Lewis, Alia Alzuogbi, Alison Peebles and Nabil Shaban to work alongside the amateurs, but there is no question of who the real stars are. However, some of the refugees involved wish to keep a low profile, fearing that their families might be persecuted in their home countries. One of the few actors willing to speak was Waseem Uboaklain, 38, who worked as an aircraft engineer in Palestine but now runs a cafe in Edinburgh: ‘Scottish people are generally very welcoming, but only after they know you. Perhaps a film like this will give more people an idea of who asylum seekers are.’

21.15-22.00 The Film Lab @ The Picturedrome

Selection of films from Community Video Units in India and from local film makers in Northampon UK.

Health, Education, Arts

16.00-18.30 pm Thursday 9th October 2008

16:00	Tanvir’s Travelogue	Ranjan Kamath	India	78:00 Boardroom
16:30	Securing Livelihoods: Fighting HIV and AIDS	VSO	UK & Mozambique	3:41
17:18	1000 Journals	Andrea Kreuzhage	USA	88:00 Boardroom
16:34	Penye Nia Pana Njia	Derek Thorne	Tanzania	18:17
16:52	My Life as a Carer	Jay Robinson	UK	29:00
17:30	Turnabout: The Story of the Yale Puppeteers	Dan Bessie	USA	58:00
17:30	My Time My Space	Philippa Forsey	UK	5:30 Foyer
17:36	Fit for Life	Philippa Forsey	UK	5:30 Foyer

17:30	My Time My Space	Philippa Forsey	UK	Foyer
17:36	Fit for Life	Philippa Forsey	UK	Foyer

My time My Space highlights NESA’s creative work with women experiencing post-natal depression, enabling their journey towards recovery. This project enables women to increase their self-confidence and self-esteem using the creative arts as an inspirational tool. Participants are able to determine their own artistic outcomes and encouraged to develop their own interests and skills. The project shows the progression of individuals on their creative path.

Fit for Life highlights NESA’s creative work with school children emphasizing the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. Norton Radstock has some of the highest levels of obesity in Bath and the North East Somerset and the range of creative activities on offer encouraged physical and creative engagement in exploring healthy lifestyles.

16:00

Tanvir’s Travelogue

Ranjan Kamath

India

78:00 Boardroom

Tanvir Ka Safarnama is the enthralling theatrical journey that happens when a pipe-smoking urban sophisticate like Habib Tanvir travels via Europe to return to his homeland - in Chhattisgarh - to create an essentially Indian theatre. Working with unschooled, uneducated villagers, living together as a family over 50 years, Tanvir has ploughed a lonely furrow to produce theatrical masterpieces. His adaptations of Shakespeare, Brecht and Indian Sanskrit classics have regaled audiences around the world with humour and humanism. This film joins the joys, trials and tribulations of Habib Tanvir and Naya Theatre on the road over two years.

16:30