Production
Some doctors say he won't last another day but still he keeps making films. Sluizer Speaks tells the story of George Sluizer, director of such films as The Vanishing and Dark Blood who fully dedicated his life to cinema. Where did his passion for film lead him?
The film tells the tale of Iala, whose authority over his two sons, Raul and Bedan, is shaken. Raul has left to study in a seminary in the big city, where unknown to anyone, he has joined the liberation movement. Meanwhile, younger son, Bedan is rebelling against every possible tradition, even eyeing his father's young bride-to-be.
For one day, the film followed the workers at the Upmann cigar factory in Havana through their daily work routine, painting a portrait that is as endearing as it is informative, yet does not shy away from conflicts. The self-confidence, originality, wit, and warmth—as well as the productive drive—on display here made life in Cuba feel very complex and brought into sharp relief what this island stands to lose.
This beautifully photographed, revealing film about Egypt's women captures their separate and subordinate life under the Islamic code. Men and women speak about their traditions, expectations, and patterns of life. We meet articulate women who have had little schooling and whose lives are centered on childbearing and hard physical work. They acknowledge that their choices in life are limited. The Koran dictates behavior at every stage of life. Their husbands are selected by their fathers. Often, at puberty they are taken out of school. They unquestioningly accept circumcision, arranged marriages, huge families and polygamous husbands. Women after marriage are secluded and some may never set eyes on another man. By participating in this film, the women question for the first time some of the assumptions of their lives.
Villagers find their situation growing increasingly desperate when their community becomes engulfed in an endless winter.
War and violence leave behind the dead, the wounded, the maimed, the victim and the witness. In ECHOES OF WAR, children left behind in Afghanistan, Colombia, Sierra Leone and New York take us into their lives and share their memories, nightmares and dreams. A Colombian boy takes us down the road where his hand disappeared. In New York, two girls tell us about their father, who worked on too high a floor of the World Trade Centre. We meet a girl in Afghanistan who struggles to remember her father of whom even the pictures were burned. In Sierra Leone a family on their way to a well is attacked, leaving a girl behind who has no idea what the rebels were fighting for. A boy in the Colombian jungle dreams of becoming a doctor. A girl in a besieged city is determined to become president of her country and outlaw all weapons. The children reveal these stories by listening to the tale of a little elephant who tries to find the courage to live with the death of his father.
In the course of four seasons we follow the process as Maurits mourns the death of his mother. His intensely sad father, a restorer of paintings, is not able to offer him any solace. Maurits denies his mother's death and withdraws to the flood plains of the river. There he meets Moniek. During their journey of discovery through the plains, their tender friendship turns into love. But Maurits anger and sorrow sometimes turn to extreme emotions and that frightens Moniek. A dead dog takes them over the top and Moniek never wants to see him again.
A portrait of 'The Daily Nation', Kenya's largest newspaper.
