Florence October 10th – 17th, 2017

International documentary film festival

LA COMPAGNIA

Thursday, October 12th, La Compagnia, 11:00am

HOW I DID IT

Public meeting with the filmmakers

Friday, October 13th, La Compagnia, 3:00pm

DUELO
Duel
by Alejandro Alonso Estrella
Cuba, 2017, 12’

According to an ancient Caribbean ritual, manufacturing a wooden cross can placate the anxiety stemming from your inner demons - in Yoan’s case, the image of an absent father that haunts his daily. Therefore, Yoan is about to do so, encouraged by his mother. However, what might look like a normal depiction of an archaic ritual is just the starting point of a more intimate, mysterious story, made of silences, internal and external movements, gestures, and exorcisms.



Friday, October 13th, La Compagnia, 3:00pm

ALA HAFET ALHAYAT
On the Edge of Life
by Yaser Kassab
Syria, 2017, 45’

Yaser and Rima leave Syria to Lebanon, but after receiving the news that his younger brother passed away in Aleppo, they end up in a remote place in Turkey, where the silence and the monotonous daily life being broken by the family calls whom still living in Aleppo. To spend a year and a half, until they decide to take the boat to Sweden.



Friday, October 13th, La Compagnia, 16:30pm

EN LA BOCA
Down the Throat
by Matteo Gariglio
Argentina, Switzerland, 2016, 25’

An abrupt wake up. A boy gets up. He has to go to work. His is a particular job, that he does with his family. The Molinas live by the famous stadium of Boca Juniors in Buenos Aires, and their life revolves around the stadium: tickets trade, agreements under the counter with the police, corruption, scalping, fake tickets. The normal of a separate world, a system pivoted on the symbolic and material fulcrum of the stadium. Something sudden and irreversible irrupts into the rhythmic life of the Molinas. Another abrupt wake up, this time not visible though.

Friday, October 13th, La Compagnia, 4:30pm

SABOTEN TO NO KAIWA
Conversation With A Cactus
by Elise Florenty, Marcel Türkowsky
Japan, France, Germany, 2017, 45’

If a plant could talk, we wouldn’t be able to understand it. This was the biggest challenge – paraphrasing Wittgenstein, and substituting plants for lions – for doctor Ken Hashimoto, who tried to make cacti speak in the Seventies. None of his fantastic experiments ever obtained any acceptable results for science. If it is present on a crime scene, a cactus seems not be able to reveal the identity of the murderer.



Friday, October 13th, La Compagnia, 6:15pm

PALENQUE
by Sebastian Pinzon Silva
Colombia, USA, 2017, 26’

A small village in Colombia becomes the site of memory, a memory-musical. The film portrays both the archaic and daily gestures of the village inhabitants by way of ancient songs, sung by the people themselves. Extended long takes and a refined film direction transform San Basilio de Palenque, the first town in the Americas to have broken free from European domination, into a big musical set, somewhat reminiscent of the refined camera movements used by the great masters of musical.

Friday, October 13th, La Compagnia, 6:15pm

MAMAN COLONELLE
Mama Colonel
by Dieudo Hamadi
Democratic Republic of Congo, France, 2017, 72’

Honorine Munyole is a 44-year-old widow and a mother of seven little children – some of them are adopted. Honorine, aka Colonel Munyole, is for everyone “Maman Colonelle.” She directs the Bukavu police unit for sexual violence and minors’ protection in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Honorine is presented with a new challenge (that she faces with strength and dedication) when she is transferred to Kisangani, where brutal traces of the war between the Ugandan and Rwandan armies are still visible after fifteen years.



Friday, October 13th, La Compagnia, 8:30pm

RADIO KOBANI
by Reber Dosky
Netherlands, 2016, 70’

Dilovan, a young Kurdish woman, sets up a radiostation in the devastated town of Kobanî, Syria, during the liberation fight against IS. Dilovan’s programs in which she interviews survivors, returning refugees, fighters and poets, bring a sense of belonging to the broken lives of the listeners, who need to rebuild the city and their future. Dilovan tells her own story in a message to the child she may have one day. Shot over a period of three years the film is a bitter, intimate and poetic tale of trauma’s, healing, hope and love.



Friday, October 13th, La Compagnia, 10:00pm

MONTEREY POP
by D. A. Pennebaker
USA, 1969, 79’

On a beautiful June weekend in 1967, at the height of the Summer of Love, the first and only Monterey International Pop Festival roared forward, capturing a decade’s spirit and ushering in a new era of rock and roll. Monterey would launch the careers of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Simon and Garfunkel. With his characteristic vérité style, D. A. Pennebaker captured it all, immortalizing moments that have become legend: Pete Townshend destroying his guitar, Jimi Hendrix burning his.

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