Apparatchiks
and businessmen
(Burocratas e homens de negócios)
"Economy
is the word. The conversion of millions of people to capitalism, its practices,
morais and culture. A voyage into the world of the apprentice businessmen
called on to fasttrack a process that took the West several centuries to complete.
A voyage amongst the debris of the former Soviet block, as far as Roumania
and then further east into the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldavia.
The challenge is known as "transition", a polite term for the chaos
from out of which a new world is emerging. The hour has come for reconversion
at legendary speed, for apparatchiks turned businessmen, for computer factories
recycled into tin-opener manufacturers, for (socialist) workers now become
(capitalist) workers.
And piping the tune is the ultimate metamorphosis that transforms everything
into money; " (Stan Neumann)
'ici
on voit la mer
(Daqui se vê o mar)
In
this film, two medical therapists who treat torture victims exiled in France
express themselves. A man who has suffered torture and "come through"
recounts his painful experience and his "remission". These three
interwoven accounts inspire a fourth... the filmmaker's own story of his childhood
in Africa.
Séparées
(Separadas)
Twenty-five
years after being adopted, Sophie goes back to South Korea for the first time.
To places that echo separation... separation with a father; a sister; a country.
Her personal history turns her thoughts to the collective history of a people
that has been divided by a line of demarcation since 1953. In a country whose
language is unknown to her; Sophie tries to understand the feelings of separation
through her different encounters. She also asks herself about what abandon
means, as the other side of separation, and also tries to grasp how broken
relations affect those who have caused the separation. She becomes fully aware
of a terrible social reality, and the cultural gap that separates her from
the Koreans.
This travelling through time, where present moments of her voyage mingle with
childhood memories, means her departure is one full of new sensations.
"At
the public baths, body and soul are but one. The attention that Michel, Jacques
and Marie give to their body is their reason for living, in the noble sense
of the term. Inevitably, once the body has been pared of its superficial aspects,
it speaks only of what is essential. It tells us that, at each instant, the
body is really inhabited by human presence. Seeing this, we are encouraged
to investigate a truer perception of our own body. We are reminded of its
truth, and thus feel closer to others because it talks about ourselves...
On discovering this world of the public baths, learnt that the body offers
a space from which to take a standpoint, to fight, to resist. 1 also learnt
that making silent decisions, day in day out, on what your body is to become,
means shouting out what you are. Even if it is hard, even if it is simple.
" (Didier Cros)