Make a Joi
For human rights
The international human rights documentary festival One World Romania returns, from the 21st to the 27th of March, with its ninth edition.
Meanwhile, from the 3rd to the 17th of March, Thursdays from 9 PM, we organize a One World Romania 2015 retrospective, as a warm-up for OWR9.
The complete program of the projections:
Thursday 3.03 – Euromaidan. Rough Cut (Ukraine, 2014, 60 min)
Thursday 10.03 – Our terrible country (Syria, Lebanon, 2014, 80 min)
Thursday 17.03 – The term (Rusia, Estonia, 2014, 83 min)
March 3rd – Euromaidan. Rough Cut (Ukraine, 2014, 60 min)
r. Roman Bondarchuk et al.
The “rough cut” from the title is not meant to imply an incompleteness of our project, explains filmmakerRoman Bondarchuk. It is a metaphor about the state of Ukraine, rather than the state of the film.
In the autumn of 2013, when the Ukrainian government suspended the negotiations surrounding the country’s accession to the EU, sparking the historic protest in Kyiv’s Independence Square which ended with the resignation of pro-Russian President Yanukovych, a number of filmmakers from Ukraine’s younger generation began recording the events up close.
The resulting material, shot during the months when Ukraine refused to leave international headlines, contains the ‘ritual’ elements of any popular uprising (e.g. the pulling down of statues, in this case that of Lenin), but also more particular micro-stories or conversations which lend the mass protests personality.
Euromaidan. Routh Cut is a mosaic of personal stories andsuggestive images organized into chronological chapters according to theme and filmmaker, which presents a city gradually transforming itself into a war zone. During the protests the word “Maidan” has come to mean the act of public politics itself: the people’s basic human right to think, speak, and protest freely for a better future.
March 10th – Our terrible country (Syria, Lebanon, 2014, 80 min)
r. Mohammad Ali Atassi, Ziad Homsi
We used to have only one enemy, the regime. Now we have thousands, says young photographer Ziad Homsi, one of two travelers taking the dangerous route from the liberated area of Douma to Raqqa in northern Syria.
The other traveler is Yassin Haj Saleh, a well-known Syrian dissident writer who had spent 16 years in prison in the 1980s and emerged as one of the leading public intellectuals who participated in the Syrian uprising since its earliest days. The primary focus of the film is the unfolding relation between the two travelers, as observed by an unflinching camera which follows them through an intimate first-person approach, capturing their hopes and deceptions as well as the countrywide landscape of devastation and war-torn lives.
The emotional bond developed between the middle-aged intellectual and the younger photographer, with similar aspirations but with dramatically different historical experiences, allows a wider perspective vis-a-vis the illusions of two different generations and their subsequent failures to turn their idealism into concrete results.
A moving chronicle of two conflicted consciences which ponder the fate of their loved ones left behind and their own chances for different lives, beyond Syria, Our Terrible Country is also one of the first feature documentaries to touch on the calamitous effects of ISIS. Each of us must fight with his own arms.
March 17th – The term (Russia, Estonia, 2014, 83 min)
r. P. Kostomarov, A. Rastorguev, A. Pivovarov
If Russia could choose, it would have plenty of choice. Alexei Navalny, a 38-year old lawyer turned anti-corruption activist, is Putin’s most feared opponent. Charismatic and energetic, he is able to convene mass protests – a quality for which the Moscow regime ‘repayed’ him with an embezzlement charge. Ilya Yashin, a young and ambitious politician, is more of an inside opponent of Putin: his girlfriend, a famous TV anchor, comes from a family that is close to the regime and is often referred to as “Putin’s goddaughter”.
Supporting roles in this documentary are also given to Pussy Riot, right-wing extremists, and the diverse group of people who participated in the mass protests surrounding Putin’s re-election in 2012.
The film started out as a web series by director of photography Pavel Kostomarov, journalist Alexey Pivovarov and theater writer-director Alexandr Rastorguev, whcih was abruptly halted by the intervention of security forces in the home of Pavel Kostomarov. The final edit mixes a vérité political thriller with propaganda images from the Russia Today television station and the very human story of the main protagonists.
The entrance fee is 10 lei, sum that will help sustain the association’s further projects.
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