Download Crossing Borders SYNOPSES - European Documentary Network

CROSSING BORDERS SELECTED PROJECTS: AUSTRALIA Title: Son of a Gun Production Country/region: Australia Director(s): Elizabeth Tadic & Selene Alcock Producer(s): Elizabeth Tadic & Selene Alcock Production Company: Film Itch Brief Synopsis: Following 9/11 and the global financial crisis, is the American dream dead? CHINA Title: The Chinese Rich 2.0 Production Country/region: China Director(s): Kevin Shen Weiwei Producer(s): Kevin Shen Weiwei & Alex Zhang Wenyi Brief Synopsis: The Second Wealthy Generation refers to the offspring of the First Wealthy Generation – the first entrepreneurs of privately owned enterprises after China adopted its reform and openness policies. They become wealthy just by inheriting wealth. In the year of 2008, the financial storm swept the world, and many private businesses went bankrupt. In the meantime, the Second Wealthy Generation, which has grown up after the open-­‐door and reform policy, is also faced with the critical transition of power in the enterprises. Title: A Class of Their Own Production Country/region: China Director(s): Kim Haryun Brief Synopsis: Guangzhou, modern day Canton, is a magnet for China’s migrant workers, on whose shoulders the country’s economy has been built. But by law these outsiders and their families are excluded from basic social services including healthcare and education. This film follows the crucial final year of a group of disadvantaged migrant children at a privately run primary school, depicting their passions, struggles, frustrations and dreams. And it will witness them make life-­‐
changing decisions; whether to go back alone to their hometowns for further education, continue their studies in the city at great financial expense, or even become migrant worker themselves. Title: Mr. Jiu's Secret Production Country/region: China Director(s): Sarah ZHENG Producer(s): Shaoguang HE and Michel NOLL Production Company: Grand Entertainment Brief Synopsis: Mr. Jiu’s Secret is a film about the way culinary skills and heritage is passed along in China for thousands of years. The master here possesses a famous recipe for making roasted pigeon and he would have happily passed it along to his son had his son had any interest at all. Meanwhile, his apprentice, boss and wife have been planning on acquiring the recipe… The master is at a loss right now… Title: Song of the Mulberries Production Country/region: China Director(s): Shan Zuolong Producer(s): Richard Liang Production Company: Peak & Galaxy Communications Brief Synopsis: Silk has become a declining industry. The chain of family silk workshops is developing into an unusual spectacle, besides an industrial and mechanized system of production line combining sericulture, filature, weaving, dyeing, tailoring, exportation and domestic selling, creating an economic miracle together with a high-­‐speed running machine, China. In Donglin, a small town in Huzhou city, there are over 1000 silk family factories with nonstop dreams of weaving a better life. Title: The Well-­‐being Area of Elderly Production Country/region: China Director(s): ChenFu & TaoZhen Producer(s): ChenFu & TaoZhen Production Company: Chongqing Olmec Culture Communication Co., Ltd Brief Synopsis: Hundreds of uncles and aunts sit around every day, seeking marriage and interest in sex. Elderly marriage in China is dishonourable; let alone pursuit of a sex life, which is seen as abnormal. So they are sneaky. However, in the central area of ChongQing, the largest municipality of China, all has been playing blatantly for more than seven years. Marriage is considered as happiness in China, while the young jokingly call sex life “happiness of sex”. Both are pronounced the same in Chinese. EUROPE Title: City of Women Production Country/region: Finland Director(s): Karin Totterman Producer(s): Pertti Veijalainen Production Company: Illume Ltd Brief Synopsis: Sixty years ago, China instigated what were -­‐ at the time -­‐ the world's most advanced laws guaranteeing women's rights, with Chairman Mao conceding "half the sky" to Chinese women. City of Women is a story about the crossroads of women's lives in today's China. The story is told through the eyes and lives of three Chinese women, the lives of whom represent the changes and realities of women in today's Shanghai, China's biggest city and the spearhead of its economic success. Director Karin Totterman moved to Shanghai in 2002 and lived there for five years, trying to figure out both the Chinese language, culture and society. Karin can thus provide an insight into the film that is neither Western nor Chinese, but includes an understanding about both. Title: Shanghai Sauerkraut Production Country/region: Germany Director(s): Michael Chauvistré Producer(s): Niklas Baeumer Brief Synopsis: Some years ago two brothers moved out from Germany to China. They are working as brewmasters in a world where it is posh and expensive to drink German beer. This foreign world offers a lot of opportunities for a successful career but Helmut wants to brew beer back in his hometown where he was born. And also René has to ask himself where he could find something like home. Title: AFRICA : Enter the Dragon (aka The Angola Project) Production Country/region: Germany, Austria Director(s): Jeremy Xido Producer(s): Heino Deckert Production Company: ma.ja.de filmproduktion, CABULA6 Brief Synopsis: A road movie through the new world order: The Chinese have landed in Africa and are ushering in the 21st century. Cutting through the middle of world history from the Atlantic coast deep into the heart of Africa is the Benguela Railway -­‐ the jewel in the crown of the old British transcontinental rail system, destroyed in the Cold War, now being rebuilt by Chinese construction companies. AFRICA: Enter the Dragon is a film about Africans and Chinese whose lives are intimately intertwined with the reconstruction of the Benguela Railway. Following the path of Simao Sousa, a former child soldier who early one morning boards the train on the coast and makes his way through the country he helped to destroy as a teenager, en route to his new job post as a security guard for a Chinese construction compound on the border. He passes through the ruins and graveyards of Angola right at the very moment of its rebirth, tracking the transformation of the country as well as his own soul. Title: The Promised Isle Production Country/region: Spain Director(s): Abel Garcia Roure Producer(s): Stephanie von Lukowicz, Bettina Walter, Carles, Brugueras Production Company: POLAR STAR FILMS Brief Synopsis: Suspense, drama and adventure surround the unravelling of an enigma involving an ancient curse and an old film shot in the South Seas by F.W. Murnau: “Taboo”. Terúa, a young Tahitian journalist, travels around the islands of French Polynesia on the trails of Murnau. Her research trip gradually becomes a voyage of initiation into the origin and the roots of a lost and forgotten world – her own and that of her ancestors. Terúa’s work helps an international group of experts to complete their research: Bernd Eichhorn, an expert from the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, Janet Bergstrom, a cinema historian from UCLA Los Angeles and Luciano de Berriatúa from Madrid, Murnau-­‐expert and restorer of all his films. On this parallel journey in through the present and in the past, a documentary and ironic view of today’s artificial paradises and an underlying question: What is left of Murnau’s mythical island? Title: Indian Spacemen Production Country/region: UK Director(s): Sue Sudbury Producer(s): Gillian McCredie Production Company: Sequoia Films Brief Synopsis: With unprecedented access to the team building India’s first astronomy satellite, Indian Spacemen focuses on 3 workers and through their stories we are taken into two contrasting environments -­‐ the hi-­‐tech Space Centre and the villages in which they live. We give cameras to KP, Mandar and Jayendrasinh, allowing very intimate stories to be told from the inside out. Tensions mounting in the team, as launch day approaches, are intercut with family dramas at home. MALAYSIA Title: Magellan and Malacca: The Men Who Discovered The World Production Country/region: Malaysia Director(s): To be confirmed Producer(s): Mohg Naguib Razak Production Company: Blue In Green Productions Sdn Bhd Brief Synopsis: This is a most surprising film about two real men… whose friendship and mutual respect for each other led to what would probably be the most important expedition and discovery in world history – a discovery that dramatically revised what we knew of our world then, and changed the course of history forever. A friendship between a famous European and a simple Malay. The European… Ferdinand Magellan, and the Malay… his slave, Enrique de Malaca. Through fresh reassessment of the original manuscripts, the sworn testimonials, verified wills, forgotten logbooks, and by revisiting all the important key locations on Magellan’s long journey towards his breakthrough, before and during the expedition, the film will reveal how this relationship – the meeting of the mind, the dialogue between two civilizations, the exchange of key techniques and nuances in seafaring – paved the way for their sea-­‐parting accomplishment. SINGAPORE Title: Prison Runway Production Country/region: Singapore Director(s): Mak Chun Kit Producer(s): Mak Chun Kit Production Company: The Moving Visuals Co. Brief Synopsis: Award-­‐winning fashion designer Puey Quiñones and his dresses make regular appearances on red carpet events and celebrity weddings. But every Tuesday, the petit 30-­‐year-­‐old spends his time at the most unlikely venue – the largest maximum-­‐security prison in the Philippines. Run by gangs and home to over 12,000 inmates convicted for the most vicious crimes, this is where Puey conducts his weekly fashion workshops. In a few weeks, his class would be staging the most spectacular event of the year – a runway competition in the heart of the prison. SOUTH KOREA Title: Here Comes Uncle Joe Production Country/region: South Korea Director(s): Wooyoung, Choi Producer(s): Sinae, Ha Brief Synopsis: This documentary will be a journey into the heart and life of a very friendly delivery man, Byunggi Joe (55, Uncle Joe), in An-­‐dong, the rural community of north-­‐eastern Korea. We follow his old truck that runs around the fifteen remote villages where there are no markets and little public transportation. He provides miscellaneous goods such as daily groceries, clothing, household items, and farm equipment. However, his delivery service is extraordinarily kind. Uncle Joe carries any needs –as long as you reserve in advance -­‐ right to the door because his customers in these areas are 72 years old on average. Because of his sincere attitude and warm-­‐hearted concern, senior people always look forward to his regular visit. This film presents Uncle Joe’s life realistically, and we see how Uncle Joe spreads out his love and affection to the neighbours, what makes him serve these communities, and how love and friendship are infused in life.