Between the Holy and the Profane(2014)

Sylvia Kristel – Paris(en)

Sylvia Kristel – Paris is a portrait of Sylvia Kristel , best known for her role in the 1970’s erotic cult classic Emmanuelle, as well as a film about the impossibility of memory in relation to biography. Between November 2000 and June 2002 Manon de Boer recorded the stories and memories of Kristel. At each recording session she asked her to speak about a city where Kristel has lived: Paris, Los Angeles, Brussels or Amsterdam; over the two years she spoke on several occasions about the same city. At first glance the collection of stories appears to make up a sort of biography, but over time it shows the impossibility of biography: the impossibility of ‘plotting’ somebody’s life as a coherent narrative.

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City(de)

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

A City Runs Through the Festival(tr)

A City Runs Through the Festival is an anatomy of the Festival through the eyes of its own audience.

Do You Dream in Color?(en)

Do You Dream in Color? in this documentary follows four courageous blind high school students. This coming-of-age story see's the students as they strive to prove that their disability will not hold them back from achieving their dreams.

Earth of the Blind(lt)

The film springs from at least three ideas connected to each other in an irrational way: the story of a cow being taken to the butcher, the description of simple pleasures, how to ascend to the top of a hill and descend in a wheelbarrow, and the portraiture of a several blind people. The great, big eyes of the cows are seen in contrast to the unseeing eyes of the blind people.

Screaming Goal(es)

Jorge, Omar, Lalo and Moy love soccer, but being blind have kept them away from this sport until they meet and decide to make their own team and compete to be a part of the national team and play in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

Survival in Berlin-Neukölln(de)

About Stefan Stricker, who calls himself Juwelia and has been running a gallery on Sanderstraße in Berlin Neukölln for many years. Every weekend he invites guests to shamelessly recount from his life and to sing poetic songs written with his friend from Hollywood Jose Promis. Juwelia has been poor and sexy all her life, has always struggled for recognition, but only partially.

Vila do Conde Extended(pt)

A boy from Vila do Conde records a love letter on a cassette. His voice blends with music, archive images and stories from the past, some lived and others heard.

Summer, City and a Camera(ar)

Summer 2021, in Damascus city, some young emerging directors roamed the city's streets to follow their dreams and shoot their first movies with the simplest available tools. so, the city would open her arms and hug them day and night with her streets and neighborhoods.

Fading City(uk)

Spirit/Will/Loss(en)

Sculptor/painter Katie Dallam entered the boxing ring for her first professional fight and, 140 blows to the head later, suffered major brain damage. (Her life became the basis for the movie Million Dollar Baby). Irish musician Graham Sharpe’s career was on the rise when advancing tinnitus caused a ringing in his ears so bad that it put an end to his rock-and-roll dreams. Sculptor Alice Wingwall experienced complete loss of sight from a degenerative eye disease. Game over for these three, right? Not so fast. Each managed to struggle, innovate, and, ultimately, through their art, transform themselves into someone new.

Across the Rails(be)

2021 was a turning point for Belarus and 6 Belarusian students - as well as for the city of Łódź, Poland, in which they found themselves. Across the rails of change and transformation, documenting a time that has not been before and will not repeat again. Heroes of the film have very different fates and experiences, but they are all connected by the place they found themselves in - the post-industrial and post-apocalyptic city, which becomes a part of their story and a hero of its own. Students, transport, quaters, youth, revolution, local apocalypse, changes and turns - they all mix in a documentary kaleidoscope 'Across the Rails'.

The Blind Child(nl)

With the use of montage sequences, voiced over with the observations of the children, van der Keuken was able to use artistic expression to portray the sightless children’s unique perspective of the world.

Resurrecting Hassan(en)

Traces the lives of the Hartings, a blind Montreal family of three who make their living singing in the city's subway stations. The Hartings lost their only sighted child Hassan in a tragic drowning accident, and have since turned to the teachings of Russian mystic Grigori Grabovoi, hoping to resurrect their son. Resurrecting Hassan is an exploration of this family's legacy of grief, tragedy and abuse; the film will follow them on their path to redemption.

Algorithms(en)

Four blind Indian boys compete to become chess masters.

A Shot in the Dark(en)

Despite a lifetime of adversity, a blind high school wrestler attempts to win a State Championship before the end of his senior year.

I Am Gentrification. Confessions of a Scoundrel(de)

Is the city of Zurich suffering from ‘density stress’? What is it like to live in mega cities such as São Paulo, Mexico City and Tiflis? Filmmaker Thomas Haemmerli broaches the topics of city development, architecture, density, housing market, xenophobia and gentrification from an autobiographical perspective. The path of his life has led him from a childhood in the villa district of Zürichberg, through his teenage years as squatter to flat shares, yuppie apartments and finally second homes in various cities. Only recently having become a dad, he plans to further enhance Zurich’s price appreciation by purchasing a huge, extended city apartment… This multifaceted essay not only humorously questions the filmmaker’s decisions, but also those of the right-wing conservatives, who are afraid of losing their space to immigrants, and the political left, who fail to embrace modern-age architecture.

Hidden Cities(de)

"The theme of the film HIDDEN CITIES is personal urban perceptions, which we call 'the city'. The city, as a living organism, reflecting social processes and interactions, economic relations, political conditions and private matters. In the city, human memories, desires and tragedies find expression in the form of designations and marks engraved in house walls and paving slabs. But what the city really is under this thick layer of signs, what it contains or conceals, is what we are researching in the HIDDEN CITIES project. The source material for the film are 9 sequential photo works created by Gusztáv Hámos between 1975 and 2010. Each of these 'city perceptions' depicts essential situations of urban experiences containing human and inhuman acts in a compact form. The cities in which the photo sequences have been made are Berlin, Budapest and New York – places with a traumatised past: Wars, dictatorships, terrorist catastrophes."

Blindspot(en)

A brief glimpse through the life of Granny Lue. A woman of faith, fearlessness, and fierce energy, she never allowed her disability to determine her ability to live.

Seeing Through the Darkness(uk)

Carried by an immersive sound environment that plunges us in the reality and the perceptions of these resilient and inspiring people, this film questions our own blindness face to violence and suffering of our time — despite the overabundance of images that reach us — and highlights the urgency of lending an ear to hear these stories.