DOCU TALENTS FROM THE EAST [ DOWNLOAD BROCHURE (PDF) ]
Presentation of Creative Documentary Projects from Central and East Europe
Date: Monday, July 7, 2008
Time: 10:30 - 12:00
Venue: Hall A, Hotel Thermal, Karlovy Vary IFF
Moderators: Hana Rezková (IDF) and Marek Hovorka (Jihlava IDFF )
DOCU Cocktail Party - following the presentation
Date: Monday, July 7, 2008
Time: 12:00 – 13:30
Venue: Terrace, Hotel Thermal, Karlovy Vary IFF
Photo: Rabbit a la Berlin Style (dir: Bartek Konopka)
The annual event is organized by IDF, Jihlava IDFF and the Karlovy Vary IFF.
Objectives
The presentation offered a selection of feature documentary films in development aimed for theatrical release, slated to open in 2008/2009. The goal of the meeting was to draw the attention of important film professionals attending the only A category festival in the region also on some of the best films in the documentary genre. We believe that the promotion of films from the very initial stages of development is one of the most efficient tools within the overall support. Each year, festival programmers, distributors, buyers and local as well as international journalists are invited to attend the event. Detailed information on each project was provided in a special brochure distributed at the festival. Following the presentation, filmmakers were able to meet audiences, festival programmers, distributors and journalist at an informal cocktail party.
9 creative documentary projects have been selected by the commitee of IDF, Jihlava IDFF, with the help of the local MEDIA Desks and Film Centers.
Czech Republic
A Journey into the Unknown, or A Holiday in the DPRK
Cesta do neznáma aneb dovolená v KLDR
Director: Linda Jablonska
Producer: Milan Kuchynka
One of the Czech travel agencies offers a “journey into the unknown” in its catalogue, a sight-seeing tour of North Korea. This spring was the second time since 1990 when a regular group of Czech tourists set foot in the DPRK. We were part of this group.
Iveta and the Mountain
Ivetka a hora
Director: Vit Janeček
Producer: Petr Oukropec
In a village called Litmanová in Eastern Slovakia, two girls, Ivetka and Katka, met Holy Mary each month between 1990 and 1995. They were ten and eleven when it started. Both of them saw her - Iveta could also talk to her and accept her messages. After revelation ended, Katka got happily married and lives her civic life. The other, Iveta, went to the monastic community and spent 9 years there. After fulfilling her temporary promise she decided to leave. The place – Zvir Mountin near Litmanová - became a famous praying place, with millions of visitors throughout the years and many more coming every day. The film recollects Iveta's inner and outer experience of meeting Mary and opens the question: how to live with a revelation?
Radar – Czech Peace 
Radar – Český mír
Directors: Vít Klusák and Filip Remunda
Producers: Vít Klusák and Filip Remunda
As part of their Star Wars project, the US plan to locate a military base in the Czech Republic, which used to serve as a hideaway for the Soviet nuclear rockets during the Cold War. 70% of Czechs are against the project; the government, however, proceeds with the talks… A pre-war comedy about Czechs not knowing whether or not to invite a foreign army to the country, after having experienced Soviet occupation and with a new conscious on the current controversial War on Terror.
For trailer and further visual material of the Radar - Czech Peace, please contact the authors.
Estonia
Black and White Window
Must-valge aken
Director: Jaak Kilmi
Producer: Kiur Aarma
Black and White Window is a film about the battle between colorful little desires and gray totalitarianism, about the war for the minds of children in the 1970s/80s. The film focuses on the tale of Finnish TV in Soviet Estonia, a window showing the dreams for the children of that era. A window that the authorities tried to close but could not.
Hungary
Partisan & Courtesan
Partizántól kurtizáni
Director: Bojana Papp
Producer: Eszter Gyárfás
Éva Kardos was born in 1924 as the niece of the infamous Hungarian communist dictator, Mátyás Rákosi. Her story starts with early immigration to Moscow, school years spent with classmates like Mao Ce Tung’s offspring, then as a teenage partisan during WW2. After the war, her life continues as wife of the head of the secret service, before an adventurous escape on a tank during the 1956 revolution. Last – but not least – prostitution at the age of 56 after her husband’s mysterious death. Now she is 85. This film is about her life.
Poland
Rabbit a la Berlin
Królik po berlińsku
Director: Bartek Konopka
Producer: Anna Wydra
The untold story about wild rabbits which lived between the Berlin Walls. For 28 years Death Zone was their safe home. Full of grass, no predators, guards protecting them from human disturbance. They were closed but safe and happy. Their population quickly grew up to thousands. Guards started to remove them. But rabbits survived and stayed there. Unfortunately, for them, one day the wall fell down. Rabbits had to abandon comfortable system. They moved to West Berlin and have been living there in a few colonies since then - deprived of food, run over by cars, not knowing how to get around the new world. And they are still learning how to live in the free world, same as we – the citizens of Eastern Europe. This film takes you from rabbits to humans, from laughter to the real world.
Serbia
Director & Producer: Boris Mitic
Introducing Serbian satirical aphorisms, the twisted kind of smart humor which enraged Tito and the communists, ridiculed Milošević and the nationalists, and soothed our way through transition and the Eurocrats. Like it or not, you are also in there.
Cinema Komunisto
Director: Mila Turajlic
Producer: Iva Plemic
When reality has a different script from the one in your films, who wouldn’t invent a country to fool themselves? The collapsing sets of Tito’s Hollywood of the East take us on a journey through the rise and fall of the illusion called Yugoslavia. Exploring the ruins of the forgotten film sets and talking to directors, producers, policemen and Tito's projectionist about the state-run enterprise and Tito's personal love for cinema and it's stars, Cinema Komunisto uses film clips to go back to the time when 'His story' became the official history.
Slovakia Osadné – Brussels - Osadné
Director: Marko Škop
Producer: Ján Meliš
Osadné-Brussels-Osadné is a document-toury-movie about the meeting of the highest contemporary European leaders with local politicians from the very last village on the border of the European Union. The little village of Osadné welcomes a delegation from the European Parliament. And vice versa – the European Parliament invites the mayor and the Orthodox priest from the little village of Osadné to visit the European institutions in Brussels. Osadné is dying out. The young who were born here leave the hills for western metropolises. And so the struggle for saving their village is taken up by the local politicians – the mayor and the Orthodox Christian priest, along with their wives, who are their most important shadow advisors…
