Film about Paraguay trash band opens Thessaloniki doc fest
A film about a group of children living next to one of Paraguay’s biggest landfills who learn to play instruments crafted entirely out of trash until they start performing around the world will be the curtain raiser Friday at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival (TDF), which this year hosts a timely tribute to the plight of refugees.
Directed by Brad Allgood and Graham Townsley, “Landfill Harmonic – A Symphony of the Human Spirit” showcases the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura as an example of how human creativity, expressed here in the form of music and recycled objects, can bring about social transformation even in the most poverty-wracked communities.
Now in its 18th year, the 10-day festival has gone from strength to strength. In 2015, about 50,000 viewers flocked to the TDF theaters, which include the Olympion and Pavlos Zannas cinemas in central Aristotelous Square and the red-brick complex on the seafront. Despite stubborn budget woes, organizers have managed to bring together about 186 shorts and features, including 72 homemade productions, for this year's event – the last to be directed by Dimitris Eipidis since his 1992 appointment.
Refugee crisis
Audiences in the northern port city, which is just a one-hour drive from the expanding refugee camp near Idomeni at Greece’s border with Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), can this year choose from among a host of films on migrants and asylum seekers.
Highlights include “This Is Exile: Diaries of Child Refugees,” by Emmy-award-winning director Mani Yassir Benchelah, which tells the story of Syrian children forced to flee to neighboring Lebanon. The film is based on the exiled youngsters’ testimonies about loss, hardship and hope.
In “At Home in the World,” Danish filmmaker Andreas Koefoed observes five refugee children attending a Red Cross school in his home country as they try to overcome traumas and build a new life. The film received the 2015 Award for Best Mid-Length Documentary at Europe’s most prestigious documentary festival, the IDFA in Amsterdam.
The Nordic country, which recently enacted controversial laws allowing police to seize refugees’ assets, is the setting of Michael Graversen’s “Dreaming of Denmark” as he follows an Afghan minor stuck in the EU country’s asylum process.
A panel discussion titled “Documenting the Refugee Issue: Methods, Objectives, Challenges, Ethics” will take place at the Pavlos Zannas Theater on Wednesday, March 16, starting at 11 a.m.
‘Inventing reality’
Among this year’s highlights is a masterclass by contemporary Danish cinematographer Jon Bang Carlsen. Known for his radical, hybrid style, which he lays out in “How to Invent Reality,” the 65-year-old Carlsen has made more than two dozen films since the 1970s that draw heavily on personal experience. His masterclass, “Inventing Reality,” will take place at the Pavlos Zannas Theater, on Tuesday, March 15, starting at 11 a.m.
Approximately 490 films will be available at this year's Doc Market, a digital library that caters to television networks and industry professionals from around the globe. Some 60 buyers are expected to attend from Europe, the United States and Canada.
Parallel to the screenings will be a photo exhibition by nonprofit street paper Schedia vendors. Organized by TDF, Schedia, the State Museum of Contemporary Art and the Thessaloniki Center of Contemporary Art, the exhibition “Images of Our Other Self” will be staged at the Thessaloniki Center of Contemporary Art (Warehouse B1, Thessaloniki Port) between March 12 and 26.
For more information on the documentary festival, go to tdf.filmfestival.gr
