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The Jan Vrijman Fund congratulates Alados Colombia with the 11th edition of Muestra Internacional Documental and is proud to contribute to the festival’s programme with a special Jan Vrijman Fund section. Besides some beautiful documentaries from Latin America, the Fund subtitled films from Iran, South Africa, India, Bulgaria and Russia into Spanish for the Latin American audience. Moving stories that include the unfulfilled election promises to Indian women in 6 Yards to Democracy, a strikingly visualized portrait of three blind singing sisters from Brazil in Born to be Blind, and not to forget Victor Kossakovskys Tishe!, in which he filmed the repairs on a St. Petersburg street from his apartment window for a whole year. IDFA established the Jan Vrijman Fund in 1998 in order to generate more attention for the voices and visions of filmmakers from all over the world, to stimulate local film cultures and to turn the creative documentary into a truly global film art. The Fund grants contributions to documentary filmmakers from around the world and to projects that promote local documentary production and distribution. For more information about the Jan Vrijman Fund please visit our website on www.idfa.nl. THE BEST OF IDFA 6 Yards to Democracy India 56 min 2006 Director: Nishtha Jain, Smriti Nevatia Producer: Nishtha Jain, Raintree Films Photographer: Deepti Gupta Editor: Vipin Sharma Sound: Anita Kushwaha In the build-up to general elections, even the inhabitants of poor neighborhoods are interesting for politicians. One politician conceived the idea to distribute free saris in the poorer parts of the Indian city of Lucknow to secure some votes. It turned into a disastrous day. Many women got trampled and were killed. Except in election times, politicians ignore the poorest of the poor. Often, the neighborhoods they live in are simply cleared out to make space for the advancing districts of the rich: a bulldozer starts at the edge of such a district and flattens everything in its path, and some inhabitants barely manage to escape this destructive action. Local politicians are deaf to the pleas from a few brave women who start a petition. The only thing the impoverished can do is hope for a better future. As long as the city authorities refuse to help them, they will have to do without a toilet and relieve themselves outdoors. Raw images of the sad sari day, interviews with the women who witnessed it and with the city's marginalized people about their lost houses provide a poignant picture of the dead-end situation at the bottom of Indian society. Born to Be Blind Brasil 84 min 2003 Director: Roberto Berliner Producer: Roberto Berliner, TV Zero Photography: Jacques Cheuiche Editor: Leonardo Domingues, Pui Gomes Sound: Leandro Lima, Paulo Ricardo Nunes Three blind sisters from Campina Grande in Brazil have made their living for years by singing in the street. They have beautiful, endearing voices. They manage to get by with other people's help, although their stories reveal they have often been mistreated, starting with their mother who gave the money they earned to her boyfriends. They bask in the attention of director Roberto Berliner, who follows them for a couple of years. Maria, the twice-married sister with a teenage daughter sees it likes this: If they make a film about you, you're worth something. As subjects of a film, radio and TV crews visit them and they are given the chance to perform for a few thousand people. Using metaphoric images of a roller coaster, Berliner visualizes what is happening to the women at this stage and throughout the film. These artistic interludes evoke the director's past as a music video maker. The blind sisters are occasionally alone with the camera, which yields striking sequences, for example, when they awake in the morning and grope for their slippers and clothes. As Brazil's public interest in the sisters begins to wane, they are forced to go out begging again: back to square one.   Glimpse South Africa/Sudáfrica 22 min 2005 Director: Alberto Lannuzzi, Dan Jawitz Producer: Dan Jawitz, Vox Pix Photography: Alberto Lannuzzi Editor: Julia Salerno Thirty minutes of images of South Africa, its nature, people and cities, without comment, edited to the hypnotic music of the Cape Town-based musician Campbell Burns. Short and long shots, slowed down and accelerated, close-ups and vistas; collectively, they give a kaleidoscopic impression of this country, more than a decade after the official end of Apartheid. This film is like a Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1983) of contemporary South Africa. There are nature shots (cloud formations, recorded in time-lapse and accelerated, and waterfalls in slow motion), followed by images inside a goldmine, where men travel through dark tunnels. Next, the camera returns to the modern city, where a crowd flocks across a marketplace at a tremendous pace. Now and then, the image is decelerated, to portray someone in the crowd, from mass to individual, from adults in an amusement arcade to a girl in the street looking into the camera, the word "Love" on her T-shirt. And from one individual to the next, showing all races and classes: from a begging white man to a rich black man, a kissing couple, white and black, and all the other colors of South Africa. Many people look directly into the camera, making it no longer an unnoticed passer-by, but part of its subject, a portrait of an era full of contrasts. Keiskamma - A Story of Love South Africa 90 min 2007 Director: Miki Redelinghuys Productor: Lauren Groenewald, Plexus Films Photography: Miki Redelinghuys, Kyle O Donoghue, Tim Wege Editor: Ronelle Loots Sound: Miki Redelinghuys, Kyle O Donoghue, Zukiswa Pakama, Tim Wege The South African village of Hamburg is home to many HIV and AIDS patients, most of whom are young orphans whose parents have fallen victim to the disease. In cinéma vérité style, Keiskamma follows the amazing struggle of the village women to save the children, concentrating on two individuals in particular. General practitioner Dr. Carol has been paying house calls to sick children for years. She even hospitalizes them in her own house, allowing them to stay with her for as long as they need to get better. Then there is Eunice, a big, kind, generous woman who is so busy running the hospice she forgets to take care of herself. By means of parallel editing, we follow their dramatic encounters with sick children and their relatives, but also the story of 130 village women who decided to work together on a piece of art. They sewed a massive tapestry that narrates the history of the village's struggle with the AIDS epidemic, and is now travelling the world as an altarpiece. The tapestry attests to the fact that human love and caring can save the lives of many innocent children. The City of Photographers Chile 80 min 2006 Director: Sebastián Moreno Producers: Claudia Barril, Las películas del Pez Photography: David Bravo, Sebastián Moreno Editor: Teresa Viera-Gallo Sound: Erik Del Valle During Augusto Pinochet's heyday in the 1980s, an independent movement of photographers was gaining force in the Chilean capital of Santiago. They photographed what was not meant for the public eye, and this gradually brought about a revolution. It all started with the publication of pictures of people buried alive and hung upside down in the mine shaft at Longuér. The photos of this place made Chile aware of what was happening under Pinochet. The Independent Photographers Guild Association - AFI in Spanish - was founded. The group was made up of both professional photographers and amateurs who simply owned a camera. When foreign media also started publishing their work, the AFI became a party to reckon with for the junta: "Our work helped end the tyranny. That's why they went after us." The photographers' eyewitness accounts and pictures convincingly visualise the story of these passionate people. The documentary gains strength through the well-documented addition of film footage: the photographic moments literally come alive in the archive footage. We see the photographers running for their lives or saving their companions from the corrupt police. Filmmaker Sebastián Moreno's father was among them. The Other Cup Argentina 90 min 2006 Director: Damián Cukierkorn Productor: Damián Cukierkorn Photography: Damián Cukierkorn Editor: Catalina Rincón Sound: Martín Rocha For the first time in history, an Argentine team is participating in the World Soccer Championships for homeless people. The tournament is being held in Sweden, and teams from all over the world are heading there to compete for the cup. For some homeless people in Buenos Aires, this is a chance to escape the daily grind of living on the street. They train to get on the team, dream about a better life and hope for an experience that will change everything. Getting to the World Cup takes more than just practice and dreams, though. They also need money to make the trip, and to fly to another country, they need a passport. After facing a great deal of adversity, a small group manages to get to Sweden and take part in the championships. It quickly becomes clear that this is more about mutual solidarity than winning the final. How does a seven-day stay in a prosperous country with opponents from all over the world change the lives of the players on the Argentine team? And what do they think about it themselves? “La otra copa” is a captivating portrait of people leading dead-end lives who suddenly regain hope for a better future. The film had its premiere earlier this year at the Göteborg International Film Festival. Lucanamarca Perú 54 min 2008 Director: Héctor Gálvez, Carlos Cárdenas Producer: Sandra Yépez, Tv Cultura Photography: Héctor Gálvez, Carlos Cárdenas Editor: Menno Boerema, Héctor Gálvez On 3 April 1983, 69 residents of the remote village of Lucanamarca, Peru were brutally murdered by members of the Maoist guerrilla movement known as Shining Path. Among the victims were numerous women and children. The bloodbath was an act of retaliation for the murder of one of the movement's leaders and the first in a series of murders and flagrant human rights violations in Peru. Almost 20 years later, the government appointed a commission for truth and reconciliation that went to Lucanamarca to study the case. In Lucanamarca, remains are exhumed and transported to Lima for investigation and identification, and later returned to the village's new cemetery. Back in the capital, Abimael Guzmán, the founder of Shining Path, is on trial. In this film, survivors tell their stories, starting with the rise of Shining Path, their Communist ideology, and their promises to fight poverty and provide work for everyone. A few villagers travel to Lima to testify before the court there, and from their testimonies, it becomes clear that the deep emotional wounds caused on that black day back in 1983 are far from healed. POДEHИ C BEKA Born with the century Bulgaria 58 min 2000 Director: Eldora Traykova Productor: Assen Vladimirov, Pro Film Photography: Emil Christov Editor: Stefan Bojadjiev Sound: Ivailo Nacev There are many different forms of historiography. In this film, Bulgarian director Eldora Traykova introduces a large number of her 100-year-old compatriots. Their personal stories succeed each other in a lucid, chronological way, indirectly unveiling the history of the country. In their wrinkled hands and faces, the dry facts of the turbulent twentieth century are made vital. Some events are remembered with a smile: a marriage, a day out in the big city, a favourite song. But everybody in his or her own way is marked by the violent crises of the past hundred years. Traykova makes subtle use of historical archive footage and old photographs of the interviewees. On most of these, they look solemnly into the camera, seriously looking to the future, together with husbands, wives and relatives who have died or fallen. Particularly in the case of war, personal memories lend colour to well-known stories. A countrywoman saw ‘carts without horses’ and ‘iron birds’ appear. ‘This is life!’, the farmer’s son thought when sleeping in a real bed for the first time as a soldier. A woman witnessed Hitler’s rise in Berlin. One war succeeded the other, until the Communists rose to power. An elderly woman still cherishes her Communist medal, though she disapproves of the fact that religion was prohibited at the time. Today, an old man prays before drinking a glass of coke. But a farmer’s wife soberly concludes: ‘Where is God? I haven’t seen him in a hundred years. Tehran has no more pomegranates! Irán 68 min 2006 Director: Massoud Bakhshi Productor: Massoud Bakhshi, DEFC - Documentary and Experimental Film Center Photography: Byram Fazli Editor: Ali Mohammad Ghasemi, Mohsen Shahabi Sound: Reza Yousefi Playing with fact and fiction to depict reality is a well-known stylistic device in the Iranian cinema. Massoud Bakhshi's Tehran Has No More Pomegranates also begins with the statement that all characters and events may seem real, but are in fact not true. By then, Bakhshi has already read aloud, in voice-over, his letter to the chairman of the Iranian film fund, stating that he has not been able to complete his documentary on Tehran for various reasons. Bakhshi treats us to an intelligently edited musical compilation of all the archive footage and the images he made for his city portrait over the past five years. From the city's foundation in 1241 BC (when exceptionally delicious pomegranates still grew there) via various oppressors; collective opium addiction; visits by Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt ('You really have big oil wells'); the Islamic revolution; the explosive growth of the metropolis to the mountain of waste and the current transportation problem. Bakhshi ends with the list of most polluted cities that is topped off by Tehran. Tishe! Rusia/Russia 80 min 2002 Director: Victor Kossakovsky Productor: Victor Kossakovsky Photography: Victor Kossakovsky Editor: Victor Kossakovsky Sound: Ivan Gusakov, Victor Kossakovsky Director Victor Kossakovsky, who won the 1993 Joris Ivens Award with BELOVY, has this time made a documentary he describes as ‘a comedy’. The film is shot from his window and was inspired by both the first picture in the history of photography, View from the Window at Le Gras (1826-1827) by Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833), and the short story Des Vetters Eckfenster (My Cousin’s Corner Window, 1822) by E.T.A. Hoffman (1776-1822). The latter tells the story of a paralysed man whose sole contact with the outside world is the view from his window. Kossakovsky made what he calls an ‘accidental’ film: ‘We don’t normally look at the things right in front of us. This is in a way an example of what can evolve right in front of your eyes if you care to look. Somehow this realistic story transforms realism into the surreal, into the abstract.’ From his apartment window, he filmed a few square meters of a St. Petersburg street during an entire year of endless repairs in preparation for the city’s 300th anniversary. Time and again, the street is broken up and repaved. The film always shows this from the same point of view, but with different lenses, at various times of day and in varying styles, ‘realistic, surrealistic and abstract.’ The title, the Russian word ‘tishe!’ is the only word spoken in the film. It means ‘lie low!’ – be quiet and modest.