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www.DOKweb.net is a portal dedicated to East European documentary film. The news section provides up-to-date information on upcoming and just completed films, interviews with filmmakers and other documentary professionals, in-depth articles exploring the state of documentary filmmaking in various parts of the region, as well as insightful texts on current trends, funding, etc. The portal also boasts the largest published databases of completed and upcoming documentary films from Eastern Europe, an industry directory, as well as trailers and original video content. www.DOKweb.net is IDF´s key online project that provides comprehensive details on all IDF´s activities and links them with general information service.
Institute of Documentary Film’s Activities
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Founded in 2001, the INSTITUTE OF DOCUMENTARY FILM (IDF) is a non-profit training and networking centre based in Prague, Czech Republic, focused on the support of East European documentary films and their wider promotion. Our activities support filmmakers through all stages of completion – development, funding, production, post-production, and distribution. We aim at individual filmmakers (tailored consultations), groups of carefully selected professionals with projects or films (Ex Oriente Film, East European Forum, East Silver, Doc Launch, etc.), broader professional community (East Doc Platform), as well as the general public (portal www.DOKweb.net). We closely work with key int. festivals, broadcasters, distributors, sales agents, markets, or training initiatives and serve as the GATEWAY TO EAST EUROPEAN DOCUMENTARY FILM.

René

René
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This raw authentic documentary film tells the story of René whose life was being captured on camera since he was seventeen. The camera followed his hopeless journey between prison and brief periods outside the prison walls. In 2008 the film comes to an end, leaving the now 37-year-old René as a sick man who still gets in trouble with the law and who is also the author of two published books. René's story begins in prison under socialist posters, continues through the so-called Velvet Revolution of 1989 and gets a seemingly happy conclusion with the amnesty decree issued by President Václav Havel. Yet René soon heads back to prison and also celebrated our EU accession from behind the bars. During the years spent in prison - sentenced mainly for theft - René had his whole body covered in tattoos, escaped from prison only to be soon recaptured, burgled the director's home, was involved in a couple of romantic relationships, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as well as a high IQ. René displays his outlook on life by flashing his "Fuck of People" tattoo on his neck.

Marcela

Marcela
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The extraordinary life of an ordinary woman. The fifth part of a series entitled "Marriage Stories" featured Marcela, whose story started in 1980 at the Prague town hall. Still in black and white, the film follows events over a period of six years. In 1999 we re-enter her life, but shooting has to be interrupted after her daughter Ivana is hit by a train. Four months later, shooting resumes. The audience, moved by her difficult life, decided to help the despairing mother. The film captures the events of the past year.

Spanish for Adults

Spanish for Adults
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A tiny classroom in the Spanish heartland is a meeting point and a shelter for adult immigrants who came to Spain driven by the "European dream" to start a new life. Brought together by fate into a small Spanish town, alienated and homesick, these people indulge in playful and enthusiastic language-learning process, guided by the extraordinary teacher Maria Antonia. 48 year-old Maria Antonia gets her inspiration from her dreams of becoming an actress. It seems sometimes that the classroom transforms to the stage, with Antonia as a leading actress. Film director Tomas Tamosaitis tried to learn Spanish Antonia's way as one of her students. The result is SPANISH FOR ADULTS - a nostalgic, warm, funny and serene portrait of people who still believe that, whatever may happen, it´s necessary to keep on dreaming.

Stalin City Cantata

Stalin City Cantata
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In recent years, a downright onslaught on archives has taken place in Eastern Europe. Nothing is as important as the past, the complex history of a state that wanted to combine intellectualism with art, culture and politics. In this respect, Hungarian Sztálinvárosi (Stalin City), founded in 1951 and renamed to Danube City ten years later, was a special place, as it was the most privileged city for realising the dream of the New Humankind back in the notorious 1950s. The film portrays the city guided by a cantata, from the musical perspective of the compositor Peter Horváth, whose parents were thoroughly communists, but nevertheless amateur party members. The film very beautifully presents archive film and audio material in-between the protagonists´narratives.

Sinking Village

Sinking Village
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The inhabitants of a small Hungarian town helplessly stand by as their village slowly sinks. It's a mysterious phenomenon for which no one provides the reasons. Joseph, however, is the eternal optimist. He takes action and acts as a spokesman with a hope for change.

Shaban

Shaban
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In the Bosnian & Herzegovina city of Mostar, at the city's Pavarotti Music Studio, Shaban Bayramovich - the king of gypsy music - is cutting his new album. Parallelly, back in Shaban's hometown, the Serbian city of Niš, Shaban tells the tale of his life. His qualities are expressed with warmth and honesty through the recollections of his wife Milica, his childhood friend Belly, his colleague and friend Liljane Petrovic Butler (the gypsy Ella Fitzgerald) and many more of Shaban's closest friends and fellow music professionals, who all contribute to showing us why Shaban is the biggest Roma singer in the world.

Lovely Andrea

Lovely Andrea
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If all pictures became current, in that they pass by and in doing so, are connectable with one another, whether elegantly or obscenely, through translation or association-how would it be possible to fasten down a picture? Hito Steyerl's light-hearted picture translations are about fastening things in an elegant-obscene way: In Tokyo she is looking for a photo series that she posed for in 1987 as a "rope bondage" model. While making inquiries with experts and authorities in the bondage arts, she found what she was looking for in a magazine archive. The cinematic tension is extremely high just now says the translator while Steyerl looks through photos of herself from her days as a film student. Something that fastens, but no biographical final revelation; instead, the discovered photographs fall into the slipstream of an informally networked archive of a life with bondage as conveyed by the media-in the sense that the master and slave games, as they're called, have become entirely normal.

Last Day of Summer

Last Day of Summer
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Almost everyone would like to turn back the hand of time and once again become a child. Why do we come back to those years with such nostalgia? When does the childhood end and when does the adulthood start ? What do we loose when our childhood comes to an end? “The Last Day of Summer” is an emotional journey to the times of childhood and a story about difficulties of entering the world of adults. The film consists of 5 parts. Each of them presents a cadet in different age and his ordinary day. It starts from the youngest one that is 7 and finishes with the oldest one that is 17. Within one hour we show how the cadets’ life changes together with their age. Apart from everyday activities we would like to show some interesting events and behaviors typical for cadets at different age ( e.g.: the first day at school – a 7 year old boy, the first date with a girl – a 15 year old boy). We want to take a closer look at the relations between peers, between children and adults (teachers, parents) to see what are the stages of growing up, how do they differ and what is typical for different age groups. During 50 minutes of the film we observe the process of growing up – from 7 year old kid who learns how to read to a 17 year old graduate who has to decide about his future. This film is a journey to the times of childhood. The first and the youngest characters are to recall our memories from those times, which will allow us to identify with them.

Private Century - With Kisses from Your Love

Private Century - With Kisses from Your Love
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With Kisses from Your Love. History is a mosaic of unrepeatable human destinies. Another part of the series Private Century deals with 1940s and 1950s. This film is based on the private film archives of the Šlechtl family. Marie and Josef met at the grammar school in Tabor. Josef was the son of renowned Tabor photographer Šlechtl and Marie got to know the environment of their family studio. Photography and film soon became part of her life. During the second half of 1940s, they rebuilt the studio which they inherited from Josef's father and which included a large photo archive. Their work involved visits to President Beneš who had a villa in nearby Sezimovo Ústí. Josef and Marie felt that they had their destiny in their own hands. After 1948 the relationship of Josef and Maria was still stronger than the politically charged milieu they lived in and which they managed to cut off from their lives. However, in the end the regime ground them down. At first it was the nationalization of their studio, later a staged trial against Josef, because the communists expected to find discrediting material in the family photo archive. Their story is accompanied by affectionate letters which Josef sent from prison. It shows their defiance in the face of Communist absurdity in which Josef and Marie had to live.

Missing Pages

Missing Pages
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At 86, Vera sets out to find three missing pages, the last chapter of her tragic love. Albert Csillag, an illustrator of children's books, is one of the most talented graphic artists of his time. On 19 December 1937 he meets Veronika Benisch, then sixteen years old, at a lawyers' ball. It is love at first sight. But history changes the course of events. Albert is taken away to a labour camp from where he secretly sends Vera letters including poems and drawings and an engagement ring.In the present, Vera sets out to find a lost book that she last held in her hands just after the war, and from which three pages were missing then. "I don't know what happened to that book. I suppose I never wanted to see it again. It had such terrible things in it that I couldn't bear having it in the house."

 

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