2nd Edition of AegeanDocs

New documentary festival in Greece, actually the second edition it is – the official selection has been announced.

Some words from the site of the festival: ”The AegeanDocs International Documentary Film Festival announces the selection of the 54 documentaries, which will participate in the official (competition) program of the AegeanDocs 2014 in Lesvos, Chios and the other islands of the Northern Aegean from 20 to 28 September 2014… The final list represents 27 countries from Europe, the Middle East, Turkey, United States, Chile, Peru, Argentina and India. We have received an impressive number of well qualified film proposals – 347 films from around the world – the selection committee has selected 54 films for the official program…

The opening film will be the Oscar nominated ”The Act of Killing” by Joshua Oppenheimer… All 54 films will take part in the competition for the four AegeanDocs awards: Best History Documentary, Best Political Documentary, Best Social Documentary (2.000 euros each) and for the Special Award for Young Filmmaker (1.000)…”

My pleasure it is to see that several films that took part in workshops organised by Storydoc (Kostas Spiropoulos and Chara Lampidou), must be the driving force behind this festival, have been taken for presentation, including films from Greece, of course, like Marianna Economou’s ”Food for Love” and Stella Alisanoglou’s ”Dimitris Papadoulis – The Multiple Gift”, but also Palestinian Nahed Awwad’s actual ”Gaza Calling” and Sara Ishaq’s ”The Mulberry House” (photo).

Fine quality is also Greek ”The Grocer” by Dimitris Koutsiabasakos and ”Ain’t no Cinderellas” by Turkish Emel Celebi.

Take a look at the site, impressive festival initiative.

http://www.aegeandocs.gr/aegeandocs-2014-the-official-selections/

http://www.storydoc.gr

2nd Edition of AegeanDocs /2

We already told that for the second time the AegeanDocs festival is running, it opened on the 20th of September (and runs until the 28th) with a screening of “The Act of Killing”. Producer of the festival Chara Lampidou sent me yesterday information about the festival programme and this welcoming text of festival director Kostas Spiropoulos:

If someone was trying to describe in two words the content of ΑgeanDocs2014, I would suggest: Looking straight into reality. Face to face, with no ifs and buts, eloquent blandishments or rounding offs. 70 Greek and foreign directors face reality. They see, or more correctly, they read the world and the people. It’s a composition of problems, situations, adventures, in which people are involved either as part of collective subjects or as characters.

How useful is the sight – or more correctly: the different glances – of the artists?

The first seventh part of our century heralds a future dominated by the asymmetry. The inability to understand and predict. It is not only the inequalities and the contradictions that spawn, aggravate or rekindle.  It is, in particular, the inability of the political and scientific elite to understand, to interpret, let alone to deal with a complex universal reality. At such times the

human spirit turns to the art and, in particular, the art of arts and the cinema.

Painting meets literature, architecture, music, dancing in the cinema of reality: the documentary. Films from Peru, India, China, Argentina, Korea, the Balkans, Yemen, Palestine, Algeria, Malta, Israel, Canada are screened along with American, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Scandinavian productions in the second AegeanDocs festival creating a panorama of the contemporary world.

It will be a big celebration of culture and entertainment with acclaimed quality films, absolutely free for the public. The program of the festival is organized in thematic sections on the history of Greece, the nazi and the neo-Nazi phenomenon, the human rights, the environment and ecology, but also on love, sex, marriage and flirt, the anxiety of death and the love of life, the humor and the blues, the dance, the music, the passions and the hobbies with motorcycles, bicycles and skate.

Photo from the opening.