Theme:
WHERE TO GO?
Where to go is the question of many immigrants that bump into the Fortress Europe when escaping the deteriorating living conditions of their home land. Climate change and the drought caused by it are behind the reason of many African immigrants.
22. SCREENING: Victims of our Riches / Yltäkylläisyytemme uhrit
Sunday 9.10
at 15.00, Kino Engel 1
Victimes de nos richesses/ Victims of our Riches
Guinea, Mali
2007, 58 min, Documentary
Director: Kal Touré
Production Company: Bandung Productions
Poverty is merely the result of a historical process, not the genetic status of Africans or some metaphysical condition we have been saddled with. With this statement begins an award-winning picture which examines African migration to Europe from a variety of angles. From predominantly agricultural Mali - which is both Africa´s third biggest gold producer and one of the poorest countries on earth - most of the emigrants are young men. They invest family savings in journeys on which their lives are at risk. Those who reach the destination of their dreams often work hard, illegally and for substandard pay, in order to feed themselves and their families at home. Those who have been deported or almost died on the journey try to escape again as soon as possible. They see no other way out of poverty. By contrast the director keeps asking about ways of solving the desperate economic situation. He speaks to African intellectuals and European economists, participants in social forums, politicians and ordinary farmers. Along with the testimonies of returned migrants and intimate views of everyday life in Mali, this collage of opinion presents an interesting look at one of the most pressing problems of our age.
23. SCREENING: There Once Was an Island / Olipa kerran saari
Sunday 9.10
at 17.00, Kino Engel 1
Guests of Space
Colombia / Kolumbia
2010, 26 min, Documentary, bluray
Director: Alba Mora Roca
Producer: Alba Mora Roca
Guests of Space explores the first encounter between the Nukak Maku people and the white man in 1988. “We were very afraid of the white men because we thought that they were cannibals,” says Kirari, the tribe’s oldest man. Known as the last nomads to be contacted in South America, the Nukak Maku have lived a nomadic existence in the tropical forests of Southern Colombia for centuries. But today the Amazon lands that sustain the tribe are being overrun by Colombia’s drug war and the Nukak have been forced to relocate outside their territory. This film observes the collision of two alien worlds where settlers, missionaries, armed groups and Colombia’s drug war unexpectedly meet and confront.
There Once Was an Island
Papua New Guinea
2010, 80 min, Documentary, bluray
Director: Briar March
Producer: On the Level Productions
What if your community had to decide whether to leave their homeland forever and there was no help available? This is the reality for the culturally unique Polynesian community of Takuu, a tiny low-lying atoll in the Southwestern Pacific. As a terrifying tidal flood rips through their already damaged home, the Takuu community experiences the devastating effects of climate change first hand.
In this film, three intrepid characters Teloo, Endar and Satty, allow us into their lives and their culture and show us first-hand the human impact of an environmental crisis. Two scientists, oceanographer John Hunter and geomorphologist Scott Smithers, investigate the situation with our characters and consider the impact of climate change on communities without access to resources or support. Intimate observational scenes allow Teloo, Endar and Satty to take us on their personal journeys as they consider whether to move to an uncertain future in Bougainville or to stay on Takuu and fight for a different, but equally uncertain, outcome.
This film gives a human face to the direct impacts of climate change in the Pacific, challenging audiences everywhere to consider their own relationship to the earth and the other people on it.
25. SCREENING: From Bad to Worse / Ojasta allikkoon
Sunday 9.10
at 19.00, Kino Engel 1
Paradise: Three Journeys in This World / Paratiisi: kolme matkaa tässä maailmassa
Finland, Spain, Mali
2008, 52 min, Documentary, 35mm
Director: Elina Hirvonen
Producer: Aalto University Department of Motion Picture, Television and Production Design ELO
The central figure in this film is 23-year-old Bakary from Mali, who left his family behind to build a better life in Europe. He found a job in a tomato nursery in Spain, but does not have a residence permit and therefore no right to housing. Along with some 20 partners in misfortune, he sleeps on the street. The film consists of three parts; in the first, we meet Bakary in Spain. The second part is set in Rabat, Morocco, where many Africans dream of a trip to the European continent. Many try to cross the water, but most are caught by the police and get sent back. For example, the police left Adam behind in the Sahara Desert with 55 other people. He walked back to civilisation in 25 days, a trip that many of his companions did not survive. The final episode is set in the village where Bakary was born and where his family resides, poorly but peacefully. These are shocking stories about the imagined paradise that many Africans believe Europe to be, stories that stand in sharp contrast to the great visual beauty of the film.
Before Dawn
Hungary
2005, 13 min, Fiction, 35mm
Director: Bálint Kenyeres
Producer: Inforg Studio
Before dawn, the wheat is quietly undulating on the hillside. Before dawn, people will rise and other people will take away their hope.
How to Pick Berries / Miten marjoja poimitaan
Finland
2010, 19 min, Documentary, 35mm
Director: Elina Talvensaari
Producer: Aalto University Department of Motion Picture, Television and Production Design ELO
The cinematography of How to Pick Berries is very precise: the way of composing the lights and colours of the forest is fascinating. Among the twigs, domestic and foreign berry pickers crisscross – and life together isn’t always peachy. They take our jobs and now our berries too. Both sides are suspicious of the other.
28. SCREENING: On The Road to Nowhere /Matkalla ei minnekään
Sunday 9.10
at 21.00, Kino Engel 2
Battle for Attica Square
Greece, Norway
2010, 20 min, Documentary, dvd
Director: Øystein Bogen
Producer: TV2, Norway
It´s the first time that an EU country has seen its treatment of refugees described as a humanitarian crisis by the UNHCR. This report gets to the heart of the escalating tensions in Greece.
"I´ve seen too many. They cross the river like bees", sighs a local fisherman. With as many as 400 people crossing the Evros River each day, arrests of illegal immigrants in Greece have exploded from 3,500 to 20,000 in a year. Most choose to turn themselves in, but they have no idea what awaits them. Infested with rats, Greece´s detention centers are now critically overcrowded. Those who try to avoid this fate end up on the streets, such as in Attica Square, home to hundreds of Afghan refugees. With no government support, crime is rife here, and as frustration builds, racial attacks by local vigilantes are escalating beyond control. Ghulam´s family sleep on a bench in the square - his four-year-old son was recently attacked in the middle of the night. "If I´d stayed in Afghanistan I might have been beaten, but they would have at least spared my children. I cannot believe this is Europe."
Ghosts
Finland
2009, 15 min, Documentary, 35 mm
Director: Jan Ijäs
Producer: Aalto University Department of Motion Picture, Television and Production Design ELO
A film about a building that was originally built as an envelope factory (located 500 km below the Arctic Circle) and is now a reception center for asylum seekers – a warehouse of humans. “I just exist, that is the only word I can use. I’m not dead, I just exist.”
La Forteresse / Linnake
Switzerland
2008, 52 min, Documentary, dvd
Director: Fernand Melgar
Producer: Climage
(no english subtitles)
For the first time, a camera unrestrictedly penetrates into the universe of a Swiss reception centre for asylum seekers. It presents a human gaze at an austere transition place, where 200 men, women and children, torn between doubt and hope, are awaiting the state´s decision on their behalf. Empathy and distrust punctuate the exchanges between the residents and the staff of the centre in charge of applying the most restrictive asylum law in Europe . With emotion, though also with humour, THE FORTRESS immerses us into the heart of this daily sorting process of human beings.
The film has gathered several prizes and been nominated for Prix Europa. Premier in Helsinki.
