20 - 23 OCT
They expect us to call in sick, watch television all night, die by our own hands. They don’t know we are becoming powerful. Every time we kiss we confirm the new world coming. Extract from American Wedding by Essex Hemphill
DHRFF / 2016
Welcome to the 14th edition of Document Film Festival. Year on year we look to foreground the most innovative and challenging documentary film from around the world – from artists and activists committed to raising awareness and developing understanding of our shared human rights. We look for films that demonstrate that at its best, cinema encourages us to look differently. It asks us to question the meaning and presentation of images and in doing so, to think differently about ourselves, our relationship to each other and to the world. Over this extended weekend of screenings, workshops, performances and discussions we look particularly at the poetics of documentary form. We examine the creative, experimental and affective techniques filmmakers develop in order to work through complex, often overlapping systems of oppression that characterise so much of the global landscape; from the ‘invisible war’ engulfing Mexico to the often untold story of neo-imperialism in the African Continent. The impulse to experiment finds many echoes, not only in the history of radical protest and thinking, but also in the explicitly contemporary context of social networks, grassroots organising and the emergence of genuinely intersectional political movements like Black Lives Matter. Few filmmakers typify the art of looking differently more profoundly than the subject of our retrospective strand, Marlon Riggs; a black, queer artist who, until his untimely death, worked tirelessly as an educator and activist. His work stood as a defiant response to the US government’s inaction in the face of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Inaction that revealed whose lives mattered and whose didn’t in the eyes of the state. Riggs understood the language of visual culture, how it is used to oppress and how it can be used to liberate. His was a striking, incisive and above all generative cinema of liberation. With this in mind we hope you will join us for an exciting and invigorating weekend of looking, thinking and discussing. The Document 2016 team
S U N DAY
S AT U R DAY
F R I DAY
C C A T H E AT R E
CCA CINEMA
13:10 When We Talk about KGB p12
13:00 A Brilliant Genocide p18
15:00 Angry Buddha p18
15:30 Libya in Motion p19
17:00 GRAMNet: Flotel Europa p23
17:30 Next Stop: Utopia p28
19:00 Xenos/A Man Returned p24 20:30 Tempestad p21
20:00 The Hard Stop p9
12:00 The Abominable Crime p8
13:00 Marlon Riggs Shorts p14
14:00 Remote Control p11
15:00 Out on the Street p28
15:30 Marlon Riggs: Tongues Untied p14 17:45 Kiki p10
17:00 We Come as Friends p18
21:00 Evan Ifekoya: Let the Rhythm.. p16
20:00 Behemoth p27
12:30 Reykjavik Rising p11
12:00 We Were Rebels p19
14:30 Fest of Duty p19
14:15 GRAMNet Shorts p25
16:30 Jay Bernard: The State and the Sound p16
16:15 Dreaming of Denmark p23
17:30 Marlon Riggs: Black Is… Black Ain’t p15
18:10 The Other Side p10
20:00 Plaza de la Soledad p17
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INTERMEDIA
EVENTS 12:00 La Commune p27
15:00 Shorts Double Bill p30
15:00 Critcal Forum: A Brillant Genocide p33
16:00 Catch 19-25 p30 17:00 Then Then Then p31
13:30 Maurice Tomlinson: In Conversation p34 15:00 50 Feet from Syria p31 16:00 Limpiadores p32
16:00 No One is Illegal: Panel Discussion p22
17:00 Shireen of Al-Walaja p32
18:30 Glasgow Glam Rock Dialogues: 3 - Commune p26
13:30 Paul Maheke: Decolonial Love, Eventually? p15
14:00 We Come As Friends: Panel Discussion p17 16:30 Activist Filmmaking Workshop p34
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Opening Gala
Kings of Nowhere (Los Reyes Del Pueblo Que No Existe) Betzabé García 2015 / 1hr 25m / Mexico Thursday 20:00, CCA Theatre We open this year’s festival with a haunting and lyrical gem from multi-award-winning Mexican director Betzabé García. The construction of a dam turned the 200-yearold Mexican village of San Marcos into a waterlogged ghost town, but three families refuse to surrender their home to the flood. Even the constant, lurking threat of armed gangs roving the countryside and the loneliness of living amid ruins can’t deter them from their routines. They keep the tortillería open, weed the pavement in the town square, and rove the inundated streets in boats or on horseback. García’s observational approach brings out the humour and eerie beauty of their singular situation. As protagonist Pani remarks, “In life there are no handles…we are floating in the universe.” Kings of Nowhere is the story of how a town of 300 families became three and how ordinary people survive and respond to the rising tide of fear.
DHRFF / 2016
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Closing Gala
Plaza de la Soledad Maya Goded 2016 / 1hr 25m / Mexico Sunday 20:00, CCA Theatre Seventeen years ago, multiple award-winning photographer Maya Goded started a photo book about the prostitutes of La Merced, a district of Mexico City. She became close friends with Carmen and Letty, a relationship that would bloom into her first feature film project: Shot over a period of four years, Plaza de la Soledad follows a wider family of women negotiating the darkness of their pasts and the precariousness of their future on the unforgiving streets. The film is one of great warmth and humour despite the violence that permeates their lives. They overflow with the energy and bravado of youth and, as they have grown older together, they have learned how to give each other the strength to continue. Premiered at the renowned Sundance Film Festival, the film is a masterful portrait of extraordinary people and a powerful case for female autonomy. “My intention has always been to encourage viewers to confront their own prejudices about prostitution, sex and ageing, to reflect on the complexity and the different forms that love – and loneliness – can assume” Maya Goded.
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The Abominable Crime Micah Fink
Angry Buddha Stefan Ludwig 2016 / 1hr 38m / Austria+Germany
2015 / 1hr 6min / Jamaica Fri 14:30, CCA Theatre Sat 12:00, CCA Theatre The Abominable Crime is the story Simone, a young lesbian single mother who survives a brutal anti-gay shooting and Maurice, Jamaica’s leading human-rights activist, who is outed shortly after filing a lawsuit challenging his country’s anti-sodomy law. Simone must choose between hiding with her daughter in Jamaica in constant fear for their lives or escaping alone to seek safety and asylum abroad. Maurice, meanwhile, escapes to Canada, and then risks everything to return to continue his activism.
János Orsós is of Romani descent, a teacher, and a Buddhist. Inspired by the history of the Dalits or “untouchables” in India, birthplace of both Romani culture and Buddhism, he founded a school in a small Hungarian village with the goal of enabling teenagers from the poorest Romani ghettos to attend universities. Angry Buddha documents János’ resolute battle against the difficulties he faces over three years, while simultaneously painting affectionate yet honest portraits of the Romani youth who use humour and their own vitality to survive in a world of poverty and prejudice.
Please join us in the Creative Lab following the screening for Maurice Tomlinson: In Conversation (p34)
DHRFF / 2016
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Fest of Duty
The Hard Stop
Firouzeh Khosrovani
George Amponsah
2014 / 1hr / Iran
2015 / 1hr 25m / UK
Sun 14:30, CCA Theatre
Fri 20:00, CCA Cinema
The Fest of Duty is a religious ceremony designed to instil Islamic beliefs and values in girls when they reach the age of nine. The film follows two adolescent cousins as they transition into adulthood eight years after their official Fest of Duty, and observes the divergent impact of religious doctrine on the public and private lives of two teenage girls who come to symbolize the conflicting cultural values in Iran today.
A documentary that reflects on the 2011 killing of Mark Duggan, a young, black, British man, at the hands of London’s Metropolitan Police. Duggan was pulled over by police early one morning and minutes later was shot dead. This event sparked the now-infamous Tottenham riots and made headlines around the globe, but, as so often happens, the issue soon dropped from the news reports. Picking up the story where the media left off, George Amponsah’s documentary brings it back to its roots in Duggan’s neighbourhood, following his friends Marcus and Kurtis as they fight for justice and search for meaning, while struggling against ongoing discrimination in their daily lives. We will be joined after the screening for a Q&A with director George Amponsah and producer Dionne Walker.
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Kiki
The Other Side
Sara Jordenö
Roberto Minervini
2016 / 1hr 34m / Sweden
2015 / 1hr 32m / Italy+USA
Sat 17:45, CCA Theatre
Sun 18:10, CCA Cinema
LGBTQ youth-of-colour gather out on the Christopher Street Pier, NYC, practicing a performance-based artform, Ballroom, made famous in the early 1990s by Madonna’s music video Vogue and the documentary Paris Is Burning. Now, a new and very different generation have formed an artistic activist subculture - the Kiki Scene. Kiki delves into their battles with homelessness, illness and prejudice as well as their gains towards political influence and the conquering of affirming gender-expressions.
By turns tender and disturbing, the new film from Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini is a powerful docu-fiction hybrid that profiles drug addicts and militia members living on the fringes of society. Throughout, Minervini coaxes his subjects to reveal themselves with a disarming directness, through a mix of direct observation, collaborative dramaturgy and dexterous cinematic technique. The Other Side is a hypnotic, raw and often provocative paean to the American B-side and to complex notions of freedom and security.
Presented in association with Glitch Film Festival. We will be joined after the screening for a Q&A with Twiggy Pucci Garçon, Kiki co-writer and Kiki “gatekeeper”.
DHRFF / 2016
11
Remote Control
Reykjavik Rising
Anonymous
Danny Mitchell
2015 / 47m / France
2015 / 55m / UK
Sat 14:00, CCA Theatre
Sun 12:30, CCA Theatre
Tehran, June 2013. Iranians are preparing to elect the new President of the Islamic Republic. Massed in front of their TV, they comment on the presidential campaign broadcast by national channels. The jokes that accompany the parade of candidates betray the spectator’s disappointment. After the 2009 riots, do the Iranian people still believe in politics? In the privacy of their homes, facing the images relayed by satellite feed, state propaganda, images of the West, Egypt or Syria, women and men freely talk about their hopes, their anger and their fears.
In October 2008, Iceland was hit with one of the biggest financial disasters any nation in the world had experienced. In response, citizens took to the streets, creating what is now known as the “Pots and Pans Revolution”. Following widespread media silence and a growing global trend towards people-led movements, this documentary explores how and why the people of Iceland resisted the measures imposed by their government following the crisis of 2008 and how they forced their government to resign in an attempt to forge a new political path.
We will be joined after the screening for a Q&A with director Danny Mitchell.
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When We Talk About KGB Maxì Dejoie / Virginija Vareikyté 2015 / 1hr 13m / Lithuania+Italy Fri 12:40, CCA Theatre A young freedom fighter and a KGB officer both grew up in the Soviet era, and yet made life-changing decisions. Today they are contemplating their past. A dissident’s wife, after many years waiting for her husband to return from a psychiatric prison, tries to fill the abyss of his memory by helping him to tell their story. A writer in the underground press, after being sentenced to seven years of Siberian exile, decides to meet his former interrogator for a cup of coffee. When We Talk About KGB consists of heart-breaking stories, shadowed by grief of Soviet crimes and euphoria over the victory of Lithuanian freedom.
DHRFF / 2016
Marlon Riggs: Freaky Free Intro “When nobody speaks your name, or even knows it, you, knowing it, must be the first to speak it.” - Marlon Riggs. When Marlon Riggs said this in an essay published in Out/look magazine in 1991 he summed up the process of artistic self-creation that had formed the basis of his seminal work Tongues Untied (1989). He would pass away four years later, at the age of 37, from AIDS-related complications, leaving behind a fierce body of work characterised by a rare ability to articulate the complex intersections of racial and sexual identity. Riggs was a poet, an educator and a gay rights activist as well as a multiaward-winning filmmaker, including a Maya Deren Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. His works for television, Ethnic Notions (1986) and Colour Adjustment (1991), chronicled representations of blackness in modern American cultural history; exploring how stereotypes are disseminated and reinforced through art and media. In other, more personal works, he incorporated elements of dance, gesture, music and poetry, developing a singular vernacular, in film, that dazzles in its joyousness and clarity of vision. We’re delighted to present the work alongside a series of creative/poetic responses from artists Evan Ifekoya, Jay Bernard and Paul Maheke, celebrating Marlon’s legacy and infusing the programme with an explicitly contemporary relevance.
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Marlon Riggs Shorts
Tongues Untied
Sat 13:00, CCA Cinema
Marlon Riggs
Affirmations (1990, 10m) is an exploration of black gay male desires and dreams, starting with an affectionate, humorous confessional and moving on to a wish for empowerment and incorporation.
1989 / 55 (+30) min / USA
Anthem (1991, 9m) is Marlon Riggs’ experimental music video politicizing the homoeroticism of African-American men. With images - sensual, sexual and defiant - and words intended to provoke, Anthem reasserts the “self-evident right” to life and liberty in an era of pervasive anti-gay, anti-black backlash and hysterical cultural repression. Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Regret) (1993, 38m) features a series of interviews with HIV-positive black men. Through music, poetry and quiet - at times chilling - self-disclosure, five seropositive black, gay men speak of their individual confrontations with AIDS, illuminating the difficult journey African-American men make in coping with the personal and social devastation of the epidemic.
This screening will be introduced by Conal McStravick, a London-based artist with a research interest in AIDS crisis video and video activism.
Sat 15:30, CCA Theatre The seminal documentary on black gay life, Marlon Riggs’ self-proclaimed “coming out” film uses poetry, personal testimony, rap and performance (featuring poet Essex Hemphill and others), to describe the homophobia and racism that confront black gay men. The film weaves together stories of homophobia and racism: a man refused entry to a gay bar because of his colour; a college student left bleeding on the sidewalk after a gay-bashing; the loneliness and isolation of the drag queen. Yet they also affirm the black gay male experience: protest marches, smoky bars, “snap diva”, humorous “musicology” and Vogue dancers. Tongues Untied will be introduced by writer and director Topher Campbell.
DHRFF / 2016
Black Is... Black Ain’t Marlon Riggs 1994 / 1hr 30m / USA Sun 17:30, CCA Theatre Marlon Riggs’ final film jumps into the middle of explosive debates over black identity. Using his grandmother’s gumbo as a metaphor for the rich diversity of black identities, his camera follows black folks young and old, rich and poor, rural and urban, gay and straight, grappling with the paradox of numerous, often contested definitions of blackness. Riggs’ own urgent quest for self-definition and community, as a black gay man dying from AIDS, ties the multiple perspectives together. Hooked up to an IV in his hospital bed, Riggs takes strength for his struggle against AIDS from the continual resilience of the African Americans in the face of overwhelming oppression. As his death nears, he conjures up the image of a black community nurturing and celebrating the difference and creativity in each one of us. This screening will be introduced by activist and performer Twiggy Pucci Garçon.
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Paul Maheke: Decolonial Love, Eventually? (Workshop) 2hr - Sun 13:30, CCA Clubroom With supporting material, this group session aims to tackle the influence of Western privilege on desire and the power dynamics of love relationships – particularly those involving partners of different ethnicities and social backgrounds. An opportunity to ask if love/desire can evade exclusion and in turn offer the possibility to re-engineer our conflicting selves by generating (new) (messier) narratives… In the form of an open forum, participants will be invited to share experiences and discuss desire through the lens of identity politics to question what makes Western privilege attractive. Please note the workshop will centre on QTIPOC perspectives. With respect to their personal experiences, participants must be aware that some of the content and questions raised during the session may be triggering for them.
16
Jay Bernard: The State and The Sound
Evan Ifekoya: Let The Rhythm Pull You Towards Your Edges
35min - Sun 16:30, CCA Theatre In this short performative lecture, BFI Flare programmer and writer Jay Bernard will present on the work of Marlon Riggs and the poetics of black queer politics. Using photos, film stills and audio, the piece will look closely at a world that is heavily influenced by language and ask: in the age of hashtags, memes, online activism, multi-issue protests confronting state violence in all its forms, and a renewed call for genuine structural change, how does language operate? How does it shift and change? And what is its world-making potential? From protest chants, to the poetic power of #blacklivesmatter UK, and from the black British arts movement to the work of Riggs himself, The Sound and the State will be an incisive appreciation of black queer language and culture.
(after Marlon Riggs) 35min - Sun 16:30, CCA Theatre A curriculum for the dance floor bringing together music, spoken word and moving image. This iteration of the work previews a new radio play This Catalogue of Poses, which follows four figures at a spectral house club night and is framed by the histories of queer nightlife in the local area. This hybrid performance/lecture/DJ set is part of Ifekoya’s ongoing project A Score, A Groove, A Phantom which investigates archives of blackness, sociality and inheritance as they diffract through queer nightlife and trauma in the present moment. ​ There will be space to listen, space to dance and space to reflect. Come with an open mind.
DHRFF / 2016
We Come As Friends: Colonial Pathologies in the African Continent From its earliest days, imperialist expansion across the African continent sought to find raw materials, labour and land for the European metropole, and to seize these – by both bureaucracy and force – for as close to free as possible. While ‘colonialism’ as the official title for these processes falls away in Africa from the midtwentieth-century, the transnational relationships of appropriation and exploitation that define imperial controls remain iron-cast in our age of ‘multinational’ enterprise, where they are more anonymous, but no less violent.
We Come As Friends: Colonial Pathologies in the African Continent Panel Discussion Sun 14:00, CCA Creative Lab In 2016, Sub-Saharan Africa finds itself at the epicentre of a global conflict between neo-imperial superpowers, with the flows of globalised capitalism converging to inflict environmental degradation and human exploitation on a grotesque scale. Panellists will discuss the central reformulation of old colonial pathologies and how their representation in cinema might help shape our understanding of a complex and devastating form of 21st century conflict. The panel will be chaired by Finn Daniels-Yeomans (Africa in Motion, University of Glasgow).
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We Come As Friends
A Brilliant Genocide
Hubert Sauper
Ebony Butler
2014 / 1hr 50m / Austria+France
2016 / 1hr 15m / Australia
Sat 17:00, CCA Cinema
Fri 13:00, CCA Cinema
A modern, dizzying, science fiction-like odyssey into the heart of Africa. At the moment when the Sudan, the continent’s biggest country, is being divided into two nations, an old ‘civilizing’ pathology re-emerges – that of colonialism, clash of empires, and renewed episodes of bloody (and holy) wars over land and resources. The director of Darwin’s Nightmare (2004) takes us on this voyage in his tiny, self-made flying machine of tin and canvas, leading us into people’s thoughts and dreams, in both stunning and heart-breaking ways. Adopting a vérité style inflected with elements of surrealism, Sauper pieces together the strange relationships between Chinese oil workers, UN peacekeepers, Sudanese warlords, and American evangelists.
This is the untold story of how an African dictator has been able to commit mass murder and still get a regular audience at The White House and 10 Downing Street. A Brilliant Genocide is an expose of the brutal campaigns by the Yoweri Museveni regime to wipe out a significant part of Uganda’s Acholi people under the guise of crushing a rebellion by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
A Brilliant Genocide is the keynote film for our Critical Forum discussion, Looking for Truth: Programming Documentary Film Festivals, which follows the screening at 15:00 in the CCA Clubroom.
DHRFF / 2016
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We Were Rebels
Libya In Motion
Katharina von Schroeder/ Florian Schewe
Various
2014 / 1hr 43m / Germany
Fri 15:30, CCA Cinema
Sun 12:00, CCA Cinema We Were Rebels tells the story of Agel, a former child soldier who returns to South Sudan to help build up his country. The film accompanies him over a period of two years – from South Sudan gaining its independence in 2011 to the renewed outbreak of civil war in December 2013. As a child soldier, Agel had to kill and also lost almost all of his male relatives. Later, he managed to flee via Kenya to Australia, where he became a professional basketball player and returned to South Sudan a free man. Today, just two years after gaining its independence, the world’s youngest nation is once again teetering on the edge of a precipice. More than half a million people are fleeing the country, and Agel is fighting as a soldier once again.
2016 / 1hr 14m / UK+Libya
A series of short stories from post-revolution Libya, filmed over three years by local emergent filmmakers. In documenting different facets of life in Libya during this turbulent period, the filmmakers have allowed us the chance to see their country beyond the news reports and headlines. Instead, the films are brief insights into the lives of people trying to find normality in a world of chaos and a testament to the courage and resilience of the filmmakers and the Libyan people as a whole.
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Desaparecidos: New Mexican Documentary Leaving your house knowing that you might never come back is an ordinary feeling amongst people living in Mexico. It doesn’t matter who you are, or who you’re not, no one is immune to the day-to-day dangers. But people don’t really think about it; it has become part of life. In the past decade, levels of violence have escalated to horrifying numbers. Gradually, drug cartels merged with the government, the police, the army, the media… and suddenly Mexicans were left with a country where political campaigns are funded by the cartels, the army and the police follow orders of anyone above them, and the mainstream media covers up all the grimy work done by the authorities, manicuring stories and presenting them as if everything was normal. In a country where kidnapping, rapes and human trafficking are a common occurrence, mass graves are found day and night, and people disappear by the hour, while the current president invites Donald Trump for a visit, citizens have found a way to normalize the chaos in order to get on with their lives. They’ve gotten used to the perpetual presence of the army and armed police in public spaces, the sound of gunshots as a background noise, the constant search for missing people…the country is going through an invisible war that no one recognises, and therefore it keeps crawling into every corner of every street, going through every crack of every building and flowing through the veins of every individual whose shouts for justice are persistently muted by the establishment. This year, Document presents a strand of New Mexican Documentary where three women filmmakers depict poetic stories of individuals that expose the complexities of the current state of affairs in Mexico. Betzabé García’s Kings of Nowhere conveys the recurrent fear that people have of invisible forces appearing out of nowhere to destroy lives and communities. Tempestad, directed by Tatiana Huezo, interweaves the stories of two women that have been victims of Mexico’s invisible war: Adela, one of the many mothers looking for her disappeared daughter, and Miriam, one of the countless innocent people that are incarcerated to pay for the crimes of others. An intimate portrait of prostitutes is captured by Maya Goded in Plaza de la Soledad, where she paints a picture with a new light featuring the women’s beauty and dignity, and the strength of an underground community that has been around since the Aztecs. The courage of filmmakers like Betzabé García, Tatiana Huezo and Maya Goded are a contribution towards triggering change in Mexico; it is through these efforts and the efforts of many others that we are able to make this invisible war visible to the world by bringing these stories to international audiences and generating global awareness of Mexico’s status quo. Carla Novi
DHRFF / 2016
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Kings of Nowhere (Los Reyes Del Pueblo Que No Existe) Betzabé García 2015 / 1hr 25m / Mexico Thursday 20:00, CCA Theatre
Tempestad Tatiana Huezo 2016 / 1hr 45m / Mexico Fri 20:30, CCA Theatre A profound, emotional journey, Tempestad weaves together the stories of two women enmeshed in a Kafka-esque spiral of corruption and injustice. The film is a meditation on the notion of “impunidad,” the impunity or unaccountability of those in power, whether the Mexican government or the country’s dense network of drug cartels. Tatiana Huezo’s poetic rendering of Mexico’s invisible war is a work of tremendous cinematic force, reminiscent of the work of Chantal Akerman, touching as it does on the power of familial bonds and the legacy of trauma; a film steeped in loss and pain, but also love, dignity and resistance.
Plaza de la Soledad Maya Goded 2016 / 1hr 25m / Mexico Sunday 20:00, CCA Theatre
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No One Is Illegal: Citizens and Non-Citizens Document has always aimed to be a platform for refugees and those in the asylum system, and it remains one of the most pertinent issues we address today. The reaction of the mainstream media continues to shock in its representation of ‘the refugee’. At best, we see human beings reduced to symbols, evidence of the contemporary world’s perversions; at worst they are an object of suspicion, bigotry and spite. This year’s filmmakers give three dimensions to individuals forced to face the most difficult situations, stripped of their dignity, identity and autonomy.
No One Is Illegal: Non-Citizens and the European Imaginary (panel discussion) Sat 16:00, CCA Creative Lab “I’m not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.” Socrates, as quoted in Plutarch’s Of Banishment, graffiti remarked upon in Xenos (Mahdi Fleifel, 2013) In 2016, what constitutes being a citizen? What structures do refugees have to navigate to survive? Panellists will discuss the refugee experience in 2016, in the light of Brexit and unprecedented tumult across the continent and beyond, and ask how the west’s imagination of itself clashes with the documented reality. How do we reassert the human rights of non-citizens?
DHRFF / 2016
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Flotel Europa
Dreaming of Denmark
Vladimir Tomic
Michael Graversen
2016 / 1hr 11m / Denmark
2015 / 1hr / Denmark
Fri 17:00, CCA Theatre
Sun 16:15, CCA Cinema
Director Vladimir Tomic boarded the Flotel Europa in Copenhagen as a teenager in the early 1990s, along with his older brother, mother and 1,000 other refugees from the former Yugoslavia. Through video messages, they recounted their lives in limbo to loved ones back home. Via the refugees’ own home movies, Tomic reflects back in this timely and unusual coming-of-age film.
After fleeing his native country of Afghanistan at just 15, Wasiullah has spent his adolescent years in Denmark, relishing in teenage antics but also nervously awaiting acceptance for permanent residency. Denmark provides support for unaccompanied child refugees such as Wasi and his friends, but only until they reach 18. Then, they are on their own. Michael Graversen’s eye-opening film investigates what happens to the many refugee children who disappear from asylum centers year after year when their application for asylum is rejected. It provides brutally honest depictions of the transience, isolation and frightening uncertainty they face. Join us for a special preview screening of Dreaming of Denmark at Govanhill Baths on Tuesday 18 October at 7pm (see p34).
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Xenos
A Man Returned
Mahdi Fleifel
Mahdi Fleifel
2013 / 12m / UK+Denmark
2016 / 30m / UK+Denmark+Netherlands
Fri 19:00, CCA Theatre
Fri 19:00, CCA Theatre
In 2010, Abu Eyad and other young Palestinian men from the Ain el-Helweh refugee camp in Lebanon travelled with smugglers through Syria and Turkey into Greece. Like so many other migrants, they came looking for a way into Europe but found themselves trapped in a country undergoing economic, political, and social collapse. Xenos is a short documentary blending footage shot on visits to Athens in 2011 with phone conversations recorded during Abu Eyad’s time there. It tells of his day-to-day struggle for survival and enduring sense of exile in a land of hope that has become a nightmare.
Reda is 26 years old. His dreams of escaping the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain El-Helweh ended in failure after three years trapped in Greece. He returned with a heroin addiction to life in a camp being torn apart by internal strife and the encroachment of war from Syria. Against all odds, he decides to marry his childhood sweetheart; a love story, bittersweet as the camp itself.
DHRFF / 2016
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No One is Illegal: Three Shorts presented with GRAMNet Sun 14:15, CCA Cinema Bunkers Anne-Claire Adet / 2016 / 15m / UK A Sudanese journalist has found himself living in cramped dorms with dozens of people, three floors underground. Cockroaches crawl the yellow walls and oxygen is sparse. Switzerland is putting refugees in bunkers. Through the story of Mohammad and images taken by refugees using their mobile phone, live a sensorial immersion into the suffocating life of an underground shelter where asylum-seekers are crammed into upon their arrival in Geneva.
Stateless on Lesvos Guy Smallman / 2015 / 26m / UK Shot over three days on the Greek island now famous for receiving hundreds of thousands of refugees from Turkey. Filmmaker Guy Smallman concentrated not on the refugees themselves but on the incredible dedication and humanity of the Greek and international volunteers assisting the most vulnerable people on the planet as they attempt to reach a place of safety.
Transit Zone Frederik Subei / 2015 / 32m / UK After spending three months living with the refugees in ‘the jungle’, the makeshift camps of Calais, Frederik Subei presents us with the story of Teefa, A Sudanese refugee looking to cross to UK. Life is not easy with limited access to water, food and shelter, especially during the winter. Nevertheless, the sense of community is remarkable. Teefa is determined to fulfil his dream and start a new life in England. But sneaking onto a lorry is difficult and only a few people are lucky enough to succeed. Teefa has been stuck in the jungle for almost six months and is tired of this life. As all camps are evicted by the police, he starts to question the greatness of Britain and thinks about applying for asylum in France.
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Communal Luxury: Post-capitalism and the End of Labour Capitalism has long been characterised as a flexible, adaptive system, able to sidestep any and all global catastrophes and reinvent itself. However, the decline of the industrial economy, coupled with the rise of automation technologies and open-source information sharing, has led some to conclude that capitalism may be running out of road. This strand of Document examines the current and historical state of global (de)industrialisation, the precarity of human labour and the implications for our environment.
Glasgow Glam Rock Dialogues: 3 - Commune (Performance/Discussion) 1hr 30m Sat 18:30, CCA Creative Lab GGRD3 is a dialogic performance between David Archibald and Carl Lavery from the School of Culture and Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow. It is an attempt to “perform thinking� in front of a live audience. The pair mix Brechtian techniques with a glam rock aesthetic, responding to the issues and themes raised in La Commune (Paris (1971), a six-hour long film about the Paris Commune. Carl and David, two fading glam rockers trying to get their band back on the road, will explore commune as a theoretical concept, the specificities of the Paris Commune and its lessons and afterlives, the role or radical art and culture, and then think through what communism might mean in a twenty-first century context.
DHRFF / 2016
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La Commune (Paris, 1871)
Behemoth (Bei xi mo shou)
Peter Watkins
Zhao Liang
2000 / 5hr 45m / France
2015 / 1hr 30m / China+France
Fri 12:00, Andrew Stewart Cinema, University of Glasgow
Sat 20:00, CCA Cinema
Document, in association with Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow, presents an extremely rare opportunity to watch this extraordinary six-hour long film about the Paris Commune on the big screen. La Commune (Paris, 1871), depicts the heroic attempts of Parisian workers to build a revolutionary socialist republic. But this is no mainstream historical drama. Rather, Watkins employs experimental cinematic techniques to link the Communards’ struggles to present-day concerns, and to critique the ideological role played by the film and television industry. Introduced by David Archibald (University of Glasgow). This screening is in association with Alliance Française.
A poetic protest against the destructive social and environmental effects of industrialisation in China. Zhao Liang’s visually arresting and meditative film takes us to the heart of the Chinese mining industry, highlighting its toxic impact. Sheep farmers are driven from their pastures to make way for mines; sick miners with ruined lungs lie dying in local hospitals. A mountain paradise becomes an industrial wasteland surrounded by ghost towns of brand-new, deserted apartment blocks. In the Old Testament, the mountains are the domain of a monster named Behemoth; in modern times the vast mining industry has taken this monster’s place. Drawing on Dante’s Inferno, this lyrical yet politically-charged film offers a moving portrait of a modern-day hell.
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Next Stop: Utopia
Out on the Street
Apostolos Karakasis
Jasmina Metwaly/Philip Rizk
2015 / 1hr 31m / Greece
2015 / 1hr 12m / Egypt
Fri 17:30, CCA Cinema
Sat 15:00, CCA Cinema
When the Greek factory of Vio.me. closes down, a group of workers decide to take radical action. They occupy the factory and attempt to operate it themselves, based on the principles of direct democracy. Their venture inspires activists all around the world, while the ex-owner is astonished to see the family business turn into a symbol for the up-andcoming radical left. For the workers, striving to make ends meet, self-management turns out to be an unprecedented adventure, full of conflicts. They soon realise that in order to succeed, the first thing they have to change is themselves.
Nine men gather for a workshop on a rooftop. There they perform confrontations of everyday life, with the police and at the workplace. In the process, the actors engage a space between the theatrical and the real. This is not a film about workers. The factory is a microcosm, a miniature Egypt.
DHRFF / 2016
Shorts Programme in Intermedia Shorts Programme at Radical Independent Bookfair Intermedia Gallery Year upon year, some of the best documentaries we receive are under 30 minutes in length. Managing to get right to the heart of a niche story or offer unexpected insight in a flash is a skill that continually surprises us. This year we have chosen to honour that craft with a dedicated shorts programme in Intermedia Gallery. All screenings here will be free-ofcharge. Outside of screenings, the space will function as an open social hub for informal talks and discussion Intermedia will also play host to our videotheques which allow visitors to view our full shorts programme on demand over the festival weekend. The full month of October sees the Intermedia gallery taken over by our friends the Radical Independent Bookfair Project for their 10 year anniversary. Celebrating a decade of supporting small press publishers and independent producers, circulating radical reading materials and information. This will include a bookstall with titles from AK Press, back issues from Variant magazine and t-shirts by Angry Artworks. Along with archive materials, there will be artwork from Jan Nimmo, Stuart Murray, Alex Wilde, David Kerr, Jim Dick and Euan Sutherland, readings and talks by James Kelman, Tom Leonard, Alana Apfel and Ben Franks as well as workshops and discussions by Strickland Distribution, the IWW and the Open Jar Collective amongst many others. Overlapping with the Document weekend, the space will also host various film screenings, events and discourse with input from the Camcorder Guerillas, Reel News and the Radical Film Archive.
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Siberia in a Summer Dress Bogdan Stefan 2015 / 16min / Canada Fri 15:00, CCA Intermedia
CATCH-19to25 Ellen Vermeulen 2016 / 7m / Belgium
With the ardor of his 25 years, Alexei Lungu lives life to the fullest, even if his village is under Soviet occupation. On the night of June 12th 1941, he will be the witness of a deportation orchestrated by the political police and the Red Army. 55 years later, all that is left is the memory of that summer night recounted to his grandson.
Nobody Plays the Trombone Anymore Hari Sama 2016 / 10min / Mexico Fri 15:00, CCA Intermedia Cuberto OrtĂz Ramos has been missing since September 26, 2014. Together with 42 other young students, he was kidnapped and murdered in the town of Ayotzinapan. In his rural village, his absence is acutely felt by family, friends and the local band in which he played the trombone.
Fri 16:00, CCA Intermedia From the director of Document 2015’s 9999, CATCH-19to25 is a personal reflection about the relation between a man and his peculiar live and work circumstances. Like the protagonist, the film focuses on details, and gives insight in a major problem of society: the temporal housing of victims of war.
DHRFF / 2016
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Then Then Then
50 Feet From Syria
Daniel Schioler
Skye Fitzgerald
2016 / 29m / Canada
2015 / 39m / Syria+Turkey+USA
Fri 17:00, CCA Intermedia
Sat 15:00, CCA Intermedia
When protest fails, what’s left? A hypnotic and unsettling blend of archival footage and music, Then Then Then offers a stark glimpse into the moral struggles of a generation coming to terms with its own inability to affect social change. Lesser-known acts of protest spotlight dissenters’ turn to more radicalized acts of protest against those in power and the machinery designed to stifle their opposition. This meditation on civil disobedience is a timely reminder of the lengths some have gone to in order to have their voices heard.
50 Feet From Syria is a portrait of surgeon Hisham Bismar as he performs intricate acts of medical necessity undeterred by the chaos and complexity of war around him. The film serves as a snapshot in time of the plight of refugees displaced by the Syrian uprising and indelibly communicates the human cost of one of most brutal, dehumanizing conflicts in modern history that continues to destroy and displace millions of lives.
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Limpiadores
Shireen of Al-Walaja
Fernando L González Mitjáns
Daz Chandler
2015 / 39m / UK
2015 / 27m / Palestine
Sat 16:00, CCA Intermedia
Sat 17:00, CCA Intermedia
Migrating is seldom an easy solution. It is rather a journey, that begins with a journey. After more than eight years of campaigning, the immigrant cleaners outsourced at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London continue to demand being brought in-house. Limpiadores charts the history of their and others’ campaigns - from winning the London Living Wage to the deportation of nine colleagues, and the day-to-day invisible labour of cleaners on our campus.
An intimate portrait of the day-to-day life of a dynamic popular resistance leader from Palestine who left her full-time job with the UN to return to her home village of al-Walaja and fight for its survival. Shot on location over a four-year-period, Shireen of al-Walaja examines the philosophical and psychological drivers behind tireless resistance, providing a refreshingly candid and inspiring insight into just what it is that motivates someone to become a full-time activist.
EVENTS
DHRFF / 2016
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Dreaming of Denmark
Chris Leslie:
at Govanhill Baths Tues 19:00, Govanhill Baths
An Illustrated Talk Wed 19:00, Platform
Join us for the calm before the storm as we kick back for a relaxed Southside preview of the festival, including a screening of Michael Graversen’s Dreaming of Denmark – there will be food, cinema and a special guest appearance from Unite, Fight, Sing! Glasgow Southside Socialist Choir.
Looking for Truth: Programming Documentary Film Festivals (Critical Forum) Fri 15:00, CCA Clubroom Festival programmers reveal growing tensions and anxiety associated with their role in fact-checking the truthfulness of the documentary films they select. With the growing diversity of documentary forms of expression, the question becomes ever more urgent: who should have the responsibility of the claims presented as true in documentary films at festivals and how are these aspects negotiated by festivals and their stakeholders? This event will raise questions and invite answers from festival programmers, filmmakers, community/activist organisations and audiences alike in the form of a critical forum that follows the Scottish premiere of the feature documentary A Brilliant Genocide by Ebony Butler.
Photographer and filmmaker Chris Leslie is widely acknowledged as the most consistent chronicler of the Glasgow’s recent history, which has seen the skyline of the city radically transformed as high rise tower blocks have been blown down and bulldozed. 30% of the city’s high rise flats have disappeared since 2006. With the regeneration of the Commonwealth Games, does this disappearing Glasgow herald a renaissance in the city? On Wednesday night, Chris will give an illustrated talk for Document on the human impact of these profound changes. Featuring several of his short films, Chris will finish his talk with a chance to see his latest film (Re)Imagining Glasgow, chronicling Glasgow’s regeneration over the past forty years. The film playfully reworks Oscar Marzaroli’s 1970 film Glasgow 1980 and uses previously unseen footage shot by Marzaroli for an uncompleted follow-up film, Glasgow’s Progress, alongside new footage of Glasgow today.
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Maurice Tomlinson in Conversation Sat 13:30, CCA Creative Lab
Activist Filmmaking Workshop Sun 16:30, CCA Clubroom
Maurice Tomlinson is Jamaica’s leading human-rights activist, forced to flee to Canada before risking everything to return to continue his activism. This conversation, with Matthew Waites, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Glasgow, will focus particularly on Maurice’s experiences as represented in The Abominable Crime, both personally and as a lawyer, gay rights activist and educator. In particular, discussion will focus on Maurice’s groundbreaking legal action against Jamaica’s criminalisation of same-sex sexual behaviour.
George Amponsah and Dionne Walker Masterclass Sat 17:00, CCA Clubroom Document is proud to host the latest in a series of masterclasses presented by Scottish Documentary Institute, allowing audiences to learn from worldclass filmmakers as they discuss their practice. This year, we’re joined by George Amponsah and Dionne Walker, director and producer of acclaimed British film The Hard Stop - a cinematic, hybrid documentary that explores the complicated intersections of race and class that underpin the still-unresolved killing of Mark Duggan in 2011. “At least a third of The Hard Stop is shot with a Z1 camcorder that still used tape,” Amponsah explains. “It taught me that all you have to have is a bit of heart and belief in what you’re doing and to just get to it.”
Reel News and Camcorder Guerrillas are teaming up to offer a video activist workshop during Document Film Festival. This short workshop aims to equip participants with the know-how needed to make their own short films and distribute them online. Course participants will explore ideas around local issues, political and community campaigning and citizen journalism. We will cover the very basics of how to plan, film, edit and upload films to YouTube and share them using social networks, using basic camcorders, iPads, mobile phones or still cameras with widely available computer software such as iMovie. No special computer skills or previous filming experience is required. 12 participants places available. The training will be led by members of Camcorder Guerrillas and Reel News video activist collectives.
DHRFF / 2016
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Venues
Credits
Centre for Contemporary Arts
International Jury Panel
350 Sauchiehall St
Ed Webb Ingall, Nicole Yip, Andrea Gibb,
Glasgow G2 3JD
Leshu Torchin, Kirsten MacLeod
Govanhill Baths
Selection Panel
99 Calder St
Eileen Daily, Sam Kenyon, Sean Welsh,
Glasgow G42 7RA
Alexandra Maria Colta, Kate Coventry, Yasmine Sefraoui
Platform The Bridge
Festival Co-ordinators
1000 Westerhouse Rd
Eileen Daily, Sam Kenyon, Sean Welsh
Glasgow G34 9JW Press Officer
Tickets
Eleanor Capaldi Volunteer and Guest Co-ordinator
Tickets/Passes can be purchased online
Yasmine Sefraoui
at documentfilmfestival.org, cca-glasgow. com or in person and over the phone from
Technical Co-ordinator
the CCA box office, 0141 352 4900.
Lewis Den Hertog
Single Screening
Graphic Design
£4/£3 (+£1 booking fee)
Hugo Rente
Day Passes
Web Development
£10/£8 (+£1 booking fee) - booking by
Ralph Mackenzie
phone/in person for individual films required.
Collaborators Glitch; AiM; Chris Leslie; GRAMNet;
Events / Shorts programme
Scottish Documentary Institute, Reel
Free but ticketed (booking advised)
News, Camcorder Guerillas, Radical Independent Bookfair.
All screenings and events are free to Refugees and Asylum Seekers,
Thank yous: Document Board, Paula Larkin,
OAPs and those on income support.
Mona Rai, Chris Bowman, CCA, Govanhill Baths Community Trust, Platform
36 DHRFF / 2016 SPONSORS