HARBOR OF HOPE / CERRO RICO, TIERRA RICA /
NO BONE NO SKIN: A ROCK BAND AT SEA / TRANS
On Monday, March 12, 2012, a Press Conference was held as part of the 14th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival with directors Magnus Gertten (Harbor of Hope), Juan Vallejo (Cerro Rico, Tierra Rica), Ingvar A. Thorisson (No Bone No Skin: A Rock Band at Sea) and Chris Arnold (Trans). Their films are participating in the edition’s International program.
Magnus Gertten’s Harbor of Hope is about the rescue of thousands of Jews by the Swedish Red Cross, who transported them to refuge in Malmo harbour after they left the concentration camps. Regarding the gathering of the material, the director remarked: "I must say that my father played an important role in making the film. He was 15 years old and in the port of Malmo, his hometown, he saw the ships arriving with thousands of people from the camps and he always told me "you have to make a film about this." Then I discovered that the Swedish National Film Archive had material on the capture and rescue of these people, and oddly I also found material lasting 45’ from newsreels, which were usually not preserved”. However, the director realized that he had to discover who the people appearing in this archival footage were. “I believed something like this wasn’t possible, but my father offered to help and for months he examined passenger lists, discovering evidence”. Talking about the reactions of the people he approached, the director said: “It was shocking for them. Irene, the girl, never discussed this subject with her mother and she wasn’t sure that what she remembered were true memories. One day I showed her the material of her arrival in Sweden and in a way I had to prove to her that she had been there. There were similar events with other people”. He stressed the complexity of the subject of the liberation of these people: “The moment comes when they are liberated from the camps and begin a new life, but they are still tortured by what happened and they may never be able to leave it behind. These are the basic questions I wanted to answer in this film”. Regarding the moving scene in which two friends meet again, Mr. Gertten explained: “Stieg was 15 years old at that time, he worked as a volunteer taking care of those arriving at Malmo and this is how he became friends with Joe, who was a survivor. They spent two weeks together in 1945, but they remembered this for the rest of their lives. At first I got them in touch by telephone, and then they both came to the film’s premiere in Sweden. Irene also came from Johannesburg and they all met. We filmed the evening and it is included in the bonus material of the DVD”.
Then Ingvar A. Thorisson spoke about his documentary No Bone No Skin: A Rock Band at Sea. It is about an Icelandic music group made up by professional fishermen. “I first heard one of their songs on the radio in Reykjavik and I wanted to find them, something I did quite easily”, he noted. About his film he said: “40% of Iceland’s exports are fish, so this field is very important to the economy; nonetheless, no one has made a film about the lives of fishermen. It seemed like a good idea to me to make a kind of reportage, and using music as an excuse, get into their world and tell their story”. He said that many things have changed regarding fishing in Iceland: “Twenty or thirty years ago there were more ships, while now there are fewer but larger. Conditions have changed. Two years ago was the first year we didn’t have accidents on the fishing boats, and this year three lives were lost. Large ships destroy the coral reefs around Iceland, but on the other hand, there is control and so no overfishing happens”. Answering a question about the crisis, he commented on Greek current events. “In Iceland we have a great deal of sympathy for the Greeks. I should note that our former prime minister along with four ministers has been charged with 100 instances of corruption, but he still has money and the power to influence the media, in spite of all the scandals”.
Juan Vallejo, director of the film Cerro Rico, Tierra Rica, was next. It is an anthropological and ecological film, centering on Bolivia’s mines. “The film’s production was a revelation for me. I grew up in Colombia and I always wanted to make a film about the Andes. It is important that the culture of the native Indians is almost untouched. While studying I worked at a book store in New York and I found a book with photos of life in the Cerro Rico area, where the film takes place, and this is what gave me the idea”. He added: “Cerro Rico has been grossly exploited for at least 500 years. The Salar de Uyuni valley has lithium deposits and is like a promise of wealth for the future”. Speaking about the area’s inhabitants, he stressed: “The life of the miners is very hard. It makes you wonder where all this wealth is going, and who is exploiting it. We mustn’t repeat the mistakes of the past”. Regarding the technical difficulties he faced while shooting, he noted: “The area where we shot is at an altitude of 4.300 meters so it is difficult to breathe. I wasn’t psychologically prepared to deal with such conditions. You carry equipment, you hyper-ventilate from the effort to breathe, sometimes I didn’t have the energy to descend”. In closing, the director expressed his admiration for the miners: “I admire these people and their families. They are fully aware of the conditions they are living under, they are very intelligent, but they don’t have a choice because of the economy’s deep recession. They don’t want the same future for their children, but the truth is that small children continue to work in the mines”.
A revealing look at the trans-gender community and the people who are in the process of sex change is the subject of the film TRANS, by Chris Arnold. “We wanted to show the lives of many and diverse trans-gender people, from age 7 to over 50 years of age. The experiences of these people were completely different, depending on the time and place where they grew up. Perhaps it is a taboo subject, but perhaps it is just because we don’t know too much about it, we don’t know what it means to be trans-gendered and what these people feel. We each have our own skewed image and point of view”, he said. “With the film we wanted to create a bond between trans-gendered people and the audience. They are unusual and wonderful people who dream of a normal life. They are brave, they struggle and have to overcome many difficulties to become what they are, while those around them tell them that they must be someone else”, he added. The director spoke about an incident that happened after his film’s screening at the 14th TDF. “I was approached by a boy, James, who had just told his family that he is trans-gendered. One of the film’s characters, Chris, was in exactly the same phase. Chris lived in Los Angeles and we tried to support him, we spoke to his parents who didn’t know anything. They asked us “what’s the problem with Christina?” and we answered that he wants to be called Chris. Recently Chris sent me a letter which said how much I helped him change his life. James lives in Thessaloniki, but we’ll try to help him. The W Path organization supports trans-gendered people and we’ll search for counselors in Greece. James is just beginning his journey”.
The films of the 14th TDF are included in sections which are financed, along with other activities of this year’s edition by the European Union - European Regional Development Fund under the Central Macedonia ROP 2007-2013.
