18th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival
Images of the 21st Century
11-20 March 2016
PRESS CONFERENCE
RECONQUEST OF THE USELESS / I LEFT ON PURPOSE / DEATH IS LIFE / NATURE PLAY
Images of the 21st Century
11-20 March 2016
PRESS CONFERENCE
RECONQUEST OF THE USELESS / I LEFT ON PURPOSE / DEATH IS LIFE / NATURE PLAY
As part of the 18th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, directors Sam Pressman and Harley Adams (Reconquest of the Useless), Justin Schein (Left on Purpose), Ali Alvarez (Death Is Life) and Daniel Stilling (NaturePlay), together with screenwriter and producer Aimie Stilling, attended a press conference on Tuesday March 15th, 2016.
Ali Alvarez spoke first. In her documentary Death Is Life, she investigates the relationship, which the Mexicans believe to exist between the mystical journey of the Monarch butterfly from Canada to Mexico and the journey of the souls after death. In the beginning of the film, the director encounters a police officer who is trying to retrieve a black box from an airplane crash. Afterwards, she is approached by many people who have lost a dear person and who now believe that butterflies bear the souls of the departed. “You can't convince these people that something like that isn't true and why should you? Everything is possible”, the director said. Answering the question why she chose to present specific cases in the documentary, the director remarked: “The film is so spiritual that it wouldn't be possible without people willing to open up on their lives”. As for the film techniques used in her documentary, Mr. Alvarez stressed: "That was dictated by the story itself. Butterflies are so beautiful, so we had to come up with equally beautiful images."
Set also in Latin America, the documentary Reconquest of the Useless, unfolds the adventure of directors Sam Pressman and Harley Adams and a friend of theirs, as they cross the Amazon and follow the trail of the legendary film Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog. As the two directors said: "The best thing in life is having friends insane enough to do things with you." Speaking on their inspiration and Werner Herzog, Mr. Pressman pointed out: "For us, Herzog was the ideal mentor, as he had a mad approach in the process of the film", while on his side, Mr. Adams noted: "If you see how Fitzcarraldo was created, you come to the conclusion that it is either perfection or an absolute nothing. Filling this gap is truly hard”. Soaked into the spirit of Fitzcarraldo, the quintessential film on those who seek the impossible, the documentary deals with the quest of the unavowed and the unknown and where all this can lead you. The protagonists' trip was full of adventures: “However, in every challenge, each time we felt disheartened and almost decided to quit, something magical was happening”, the two directors explained. They drew to the conclusion that “you should not be afraid to live those moments when you are confronted with the unknown. We wouldn't have experienced anything ourselves, hadn't we tried to discover the story”.
Next up, director Justin Schein talked about anti-war activist Mayer Vishner, who is the hero of his documentary Left on Purpose. ?Midway through the filming, Vishner, who had developed a close bond with the filmmaker in between, states that his last political action will be to commit suicide on camera. The moral dilemma of the director was huge, as he had to decide whether to turn off his camera or use it to keep his friend alive. "I make documentaries the past 20 years. Each film has its own moral minefields, even in the easiest situations. In this case however, I felt a great shock as a director and a friend. I told him that I wanted him to live and I didn't want the film to be about his suicide. Finally, it is what he really wanted and I had to respect that. He put me in a very difficult position, but it didn’t harm that he used me to make a statement”. The director decided to respect his friend's wish and he explained that he made the film in order to focus on similar problems that elderly people face, because, as he claimed: “Suicide is a very serious problem in the USA for people in Vishner's age. I wanted to start a discussion on how someone ages and how he/she faces depression and isolation”.
Upon the start of their daughter’s education, Daniel and Aimie Stilling - director and screenwriter/producer of NaturePlay respectively - realized that high-stakes testing fill children with extreme stress without actually contributing to the learning process. "The issue of education is also an economic one, but it is also a battle for power that does not necessarily purport to the children's well-being. We focused on the subject of high stakes testing and instead of showing only the problems, we pointed also to solutions”, the filmmakers said. The film takes us through the Scandinavian model of experiential learning, a process of learning through contact with nature and outdoors playing, away from the school's walls. “We wanted to see how humans as a species learn through their experiences, using their entire body and in contact with the external environment. We educate a generation of robots, however children are not computers that we can program”, Mr. Stilling stressed, adding that children having fun at school is not an end in itself, but an effective way of learning. "Greece gave us democracy. Scandinavians showed us the significance of a proper childhood”, Mr. Stilling characteristically added.
