Exceptional creative documentaries from the second edition of project KineDok are being screened in 7 European countries already and in the Czech Republic alone they can be seen at 42 alternative venues. On October 5, 2016, KineDok will also start its cooperation with MeetFactory Gallery. The opening film will be the Latvian documentary My Father the banker, followed by a discussion with its director Ieva Ozolina and preceded by a curator’s guided tour of the exhibition Laughter and Forgetting.
The commented tour of the thematically related exhibition Laughter and Forgetting will begin in MeetFactory at 7.30 p.m. At 8.00 p.m. the screening of an intriguing Latvian documentary My Father the Banker, supported by Institute of Documentary Film, will start. Its protagonist is Boriss Osipovs, formerly an associate professor at a university, specializing in alternative energy resources. However, with the dissolution of Soviet Union and following independence of Latvia, he took advantage of the newly emerged opportunities. During the “wild capitalism” in the nineties he quickly re-qualified for a banker and began earning great sums of money. Besides, he left his family, found himself a younger girlfriend, and began to increase his wealth also by the means of illegal financial operations. Once he became threatened by being arrested for the suspicious financial transactions, he quickly decided to leave his country. Nobody has heard from him since that. After 18 years, Interpol contacted the surprised family with an announcement that a photography of an older man had been found who looks much alike Boriss and has been spending some time in a lunatic asylum in Malaysia. Although her relatives are very dubious about that, the director of the film decides to find out, whether the man could really be her father.
The director Ieva Ozolina will share the interesting experience from the shooting of her successful documentary debut, in which she focuses not only on personal, family issues and her father’s story, but also uses the archives and light tone to comment on the precipitous transformation of Latvia from a poor part of the Soviet empire into an independent country with seemingly endless possibilities.
KineDok will return to MeetFactory two more times before the end of the year. On November 11, from 7.30 p.m. the screening of a multi-award winning documentary Domino Effect will take place. The formally elaborate story about the Abkhazian sports minister, who refuses to give up on both the dream of independence of his country and his relationship with the hysterical Russian opera diva, takes place on the background of the VIII. World Domino Championship, set in the backdrop of the devastated Abkhazia, where - despite the Russian promises - almost nothing works properly. You can read the interview with the filmmakers here.
On December 12, 2016, again at 7.30. p.m. there will be a screening of a poetical Norwegian documentary Siblings Are Forever. Its main characters are Magnar and Oddny, two siblings in their seventies, who take care of the family farm in western Norway true to the traditional ways of their ancestors.