13th THESSALONIKI DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL - Images of the 21st Century
March 11 – 20, 2010
RETROSPECTIVES AND SPOTLIGHTS
A retrospective to Sergei Loznitsa and a spotlight to Helena Trestikova are spearheading this year’s13th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival program.
Sergei Loznitsa
Sergei Loznitsa garnered rave reviews this year with his first fiction feature as a director, My Joy, behind which lies a very successful and prolific documentary career, marked by awards such as the Golden Dragon of the Krakow IFF, Best Documentary Awards at the Karlovy Vary IFF, as well as several prizes in various editions of the Leipzig DOK Festival. He has developed a particular cinematic language of his own, thematic as well as aesthetic, which has made his work discernible and unique in the genre.
Loznitsa was born in 1964 in Baranavichy (Belarus). He studied mechanical engineering and worked at the Cybernetics Institute in the Ukraine and as a translator of Japanese. He later studied filmmaking in Russia, got involved with documentaries in 2000 and since 2001 he has been living in Germany, working as a director, writer and editor.
His films exhibit a particular interest in the concept of time, often capturing an everyday occurrence that, however, seems to bear the stamp of history. Revue, for example, one of Loznitsa’s most lauded films, is a montage of archival footage from the 1950s and1960s, assembling a narrative of daily life in a provincial Soviet town; Blockade again uses archival material to create a narration of the WWII Leningrad siege. Simple actions, such as the construction of a house, a fishing expedition, everyday chatter or factory work, take on the form of historical testimony, acquire sociological meaning and depth and often become lyrical, almost poetic instances. As Loznitsa himself notes “Cinema gives us back lost time, people's faces, circumstances and surroundings”.
Sergei Loznitsa will attend the 13th Documentary Festival to present and discuss his work; all his documentary films, shorts and features will be screened during the Festival.
Retrospective Sergei Loznitsa - THE FILMS:
Northern Light (Lumiere du Nord), France, 2008, 52’
Revue (Predstavleniye), Germany/Russia/Ukraine, 2008, 83 ‘
Artel, Russia, 2006, 30 ‘
Blockade (Blokada), Russia, 2005, 52 ‘
Factory (Fabrika), Russia, 2004, 30 ‘
Landscape (Peyzazh), Germany, 2003, 60 ‘
Settlement (Poselyeniye), Russia, 2001, 80’
The Train Stop (Polustanok), Russia, 2000, 25 ‘
Life, Autumn (Zhin, osin), Russia, 1998, 34’
Today We Are Going To Build a House (Segodnya my postroim dom), Russia, 1996, 28’
Helena Trestikova
Multi award-winning documentary filmmaker Helena Trestikova was born in Prague in 1949 and, after studying in the FAMU film academy (where she now teaches a documentary course), began working in Czech television in the early 1970s. She first gained popularity in her country during the 1980s, with a series of films for television entitled Marital Scales (Manzelske etudy), in which she followed six married couples and their family life between 1980 and 1987.
After Marital Scales, Trestikova continued to make the long-term observational documentaries that have shaped and constitute the body of her career; she documents, sometimes for whole decades, the extraordinary stories of seemingly ordinary people. Her distinctive brand of filmmaking, structured around the idea of prolonged and unobtrusive observation of her subjects (often people on the outskirts of society), has garnered her several prestigious awards, such as the Golden Dove of the DOK Leipzig IFF and, very recently, the European Film Academy's Prix Arte.
Trestikova has made approximately thirty documentaries, shorts and features, focusing primarily on human relationships and social issues. Seven of her films will be screened during the 13th TDF, including her latest Katka. Katka follows a heroin addict, over a period of almost 14 years, through doomed and abusive love affairs, thieving and prostitution, culminating in a pregnancy that offers her the potential to change her life around.
Spotlight Helena Trestikova - THE FILMS:
Katka, Czech Republic, 2010, 90’
Rene, Czech Republic, 2008, 90’
Marcela, Czech Republic, 2007, 82’
Marriage Stories: Twenty Years Later (Manzelske etudy po 20 letech), Czech Republic, 2006, 90’
My Lucky Star (Moje stastna hvazda), Czech Republic, 2004, 58’
Hitler, Stalin & I (Hitler, Stalin a ja), Czech Republic, 2001, 60’
Sweet Century (Sladke stoleti), Czech Republic, 1997, 58’
