Works from Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival- Selections from this year’s competition
*All YIDFF films are in English or with English subtitles.
D1.Nomad’s Home by Iman Kamel
Iman Kamel / Egypt, Germany, UAE, Kuwait / 2010 / Arabic, English / Video / 61min
A journey through the remote, bleak deserts of the Sinai Peninsula brings the filmmaker into contact with Selema, a female entrepreneur who resides there. In a drought-stricken village near Moses Mountain, she was the first girl from her community to attend school. Supported by her husband, she challenges local customs and attempts to bring economic power and education to Bedouin women. The lifestyles of these women, shown from the director’s personal perspective, eventually resonate and overlap poetically with the nomadic past of the director herself, who was born and raised in Egypt and moved from place to place before settling in her current home of Berlin.
D2. Position Among the Stars by Leonard Retel Helmrich
Leonard Retel Helmrich / The Netherlands / 2010 / Indonesian / Video / 111min
This film is the conclusion to a trilogy, filmed over twelve years, that follows an Indonesian family and centers on a grandmother who has come from the countryside to visit her granddaughter, who has lived with her uncle’s family since the death of her parents. The film briskly captures arguments between the uncle, who lacks a steady job but devotes himself to his fighting fish, and his disapproving wife, and the problem of whether the rebellious granddaughter will go to university. While skillfully touching upon religious conflict, the gap between rich and poor, and attitudinal differences between generations, the deft camerawork dramatically and humorously depicts the everyday lives of ordinary people with strong familial bonds.
D3. The Embrace of the River by Nicolas Rincon Gille
Nicolas Rincon Gille / Belgium, Colombia / 2010 / Spanish / Video / 73 min
The 1,540-kilometer-long Magdalena River flows from western Colombia into the Caribbean Sea. The people who live along its banks have historically revered Mohan, the spirit of the river who provides their daily sustenance and also takes their lives in aquatic accidents. In a thick, mysterious fog, people offer cigars and local distilled liquor to Mohan in exchange for a bountiful catch of fish. Stories of encounters with Mohan are eloquently told, propelled by the flow of the river. Eventually, numerous testimonies regarding floating body parts dismembered in massacres bring us into contact with the realities that Colombia faces today. The film adeptly unites these truths with the river as an intersection of life and death, the living and spirits, and quietly shares the fierce anger and deep sadness of women who have lost their sons and siblings.
D4. Day is Done by Thomas Imbach
Thomas Imbach / Switzerland / 2011 / Swiss, German / Video / 70min
A smokestack looming over the suburbs, passenger jets taking off, and many other incidents on the streets below as seen from the window of an apartment, recorded diligently for over fifteen years. Meanwhile, messages left on an answering machine provide fragments of the director’s personal life. Everyday scenery that sometimes speeds up with time-lapse photography, and voices that offer hints regarding the filmmaker’s lifestyle. Both overlap within the flow of time, profiling a cross section of the world. The title is taken from a song by Nick Drake.