Archive for December, 2006
This hypnotic documentary about the life of monks in the French Alps, who live under a vow of silence, is now out on DVD. Directed by German Philip Gröning, the film is a next-to-silent meditation on monastic life. No music (except for the chants), no interviews, and no commentaries.
It was after 19 years following his first encounter with the order’s leader that Gröning was granted permission to shoot the film. During the shoot, he locked himself up in the monastery for five months, immersing himself in the never-before-seen world of the Grande Chartreuse monastery. Before the documentary started making its way through the film festival circuit, Gröning arranged a screening for the monks. “They found a lot of humor in it,” he told Newsweek. The film took 700,000 euro to make, and received many awards, including the Special Jury Price at Sundance.
Click here for the production notes and a lengthy interview with the director.
“An Incoveninent Truth” is a feature documentary based on a PowerPoint presentation by former vice President Al Gore. While the US political establishment continues to sweep global warming under the carpet, Al Gore has plunged headlong into a serious wake-up call for the planet with a series of lectures about the problem.
It’s on one of these lectures that this movie from director Davis Guggenheim is based. Guggenheim breaks up Gore’s delivery by illustrating his points with film footage, much of which features Gore exploring the globe as he examines the effects of global warming. Gore’s speech is neatly divided between calm recitations of the facts about the issue and several stories of a personal nature. His skills as an orator are considerable, and it’s hard not to be alarmed by most of what he has to say.
Indeed, as Gore relates tales of melting polar icecaps, rising global temperatures, and the reluctance of political leaders to do something about the problem, the film takes on an air of hopelessness and doom, especially as no easy solutions are offered.
Watch the trailer on Google Video
Look up this documentary and related books on Amazon.co.uk
A documentary aired by Danish public broadcaster DR earlier this month has stirred up a major controversy in Denmark over the government’s role in a 2002 incident where Danish troops allegedly handed over Afghanis to US forces near Kandahar.
In ‘The Secret War’, director Christoffer Guldbrandsen suggests that Danish troops turned 31 prisoners captured in Afghanistan over to US forces who tortured the prisoners. The film premiered at Copenhagen’s Grand Theatre to a full house that included many high-ranking members of opposition parties.
Continue reading ‘Danish documentary causes political turmoil’
It is now official - a BBC film on the 1980s computer game Tetris has become a documentary hit on Google Video. “Tetris - From Russia with Love” presents the story of the Russian-invented game as an entertaining and compelling footnote to the Cold War. In it, a tale of high stakes, intimidation and legal feuds unfold against the backdrop of Cold War tensions between East and West.
“Everything about [the game’s] development links so closely into that era’s political and economic context. If it hadn’t been for that moment in history Tetris would have been nothing. For a start it needed a certain level of technology to have ever been developed but it also needed that moment of political opening up to creep across the Iron Curtain and become a success in the West,” said director Magnus Temple in an interview on BBC Four. Read the full interview, and watch the film on Google Video.
The New York-based NGO Witness is in the process of developing a Human Rights Video Hub, into which anyone can upload footage documenting human rights violations. The organisers hope that the site will become a central hub for user-generated content on issues of human rights. Witness.org, which was founded by Peter Gabriel, plans for a public premiere in 2007. The pilot is already up and running at Globalvoicesonline.org. Submissions are welcome.
Kim Longinotto’s highly acclaimed film “Sisters In Law” was shortlisted for Oscar consideration this year. Made in Cameroon, it follows two women, a judge and a state prosecutor, as they deal with cases of domestic violence, child abuse and divorce in a deeply traditional community. She gave this interview to the One World Festival in Prague in March 2006.
Q: Compared to some of your earlier films, the stories in Sisters In Law seem a lot more universal: they are situations which arise in every community…
Continue reading ‘Interview with Kim Longinotto’
Six awards were presented by the Thomson Foundation in New Delhi on November 30, recognising outstanding achievement in the coverage of the HIV/AIDS in India. The awards went to the following journalists:
1. Mohuya Chaudhuri for “AIDS under the Arclights”, a programme on NDTV that made an in-depth examination of exploitation and exposure to HIV in the Chennai film industry.
2. Bharati Ghanashyam for her article “Whither messaging?”, which investigated the effectiveness of health communication. The report focused on attitudes and misconceptions about HIV/AIDS in the southern Indian state of Karnataka.
Continue reading ‘Indian HIV/ AIDS reporting awards announced’
