This year at SIDOF, 10 foreign documentaries are ready for screenings. But these selected ones can be betraying to those of you who are expecting ‘excellent’ documentary films. Obviously this doesn’t mean that these films aren’t just good enough but they may not be categorized as ‘masterpieces’ in terms of formality, nor as ‘great works’ in terms of their contents.
We are able to see various kinds of documentaries through TV broadcasting or different kinds of film festivals. And there are that many documentary films produced and consumed. There are many films boasting accolades and prizes from prestigious film festivals. But this year at SIDOF, we would like to introduce movies which ‘can share our problems’ or made ‘in the same world we live in’, rather than the films ‘we need to look up to’.
There are basically two main topics that this year’s films talk about. First is ‘how will Asia be recorded in documentary films?’. The ever so fast changing world of Asia is one of the most interesting subject to documentary filmmakers around the world, and it’s true that tremendous numbers of documentary about Asia are made by westerners. But it’s also true that images created by these virtuous western cameras make us uneasy. Asia could just be another gold mine where they have founded after wandering around the world. Maybe Asia could be a magical place where every documentary filmmakers would be fascinated by it’s novelty. Than with what point of view should we regard Asia with? This is where the second topic sprouts. Than how can people with cameras record this world?
The foreign films of this year have their own ways of replying to these two topics. The world of Asia where we live in, and ‘I’ who is staring at that object, this is where films all start. China’s Zhou Hao dives into the world of Chinese college entrance exam and finds many ironies from the classrooms of high school seniors. In his other work <Using>, he meets a drug addict A-long, in the deserted back alleys of Gwang Zhou. The relationship of these two, a director who’s trying to record an addict and A-long who obviously knows the intentions of the director and trying to use him, isn’t something that we normally witness in ordinary documentary films. Just like the film’s title <Using>, they seem to be using each others for their own good. The director candidly reveals the situation of current China, addicted to drugs, and himself who’s standing in the back alleys with a camera in hand. <All’s right with the world> which was chosen to be the closing movie, serenely records the lives of people who rely on governmental aid and the new years celebration of Hong Kong. <Playing between elephants> visualizes the life after the Tsunami with microscopic point of view. Short movies like <Mayomi>, <Until when you die> and <Prayer of Peace-Relief & Resistance in Burma's War Zones > all show various kinds of point of view toward Asia.
<Dutch Cocaine Factory> starts from the fact that there once was mass production of cocaine in Netherlands and leads us towards the world of ‘legalization’ with experimental images. <Our daily bread> leads the viewers into the ‘wonderland’ of food production and questions them of current food problem with just visual images rather than vocabularies.
This year’s foreign films for SIDOF could be somewhat unfamiliar to the viewers. But these films arouse old questions that have been dealt over the years by documentary films rather than coming up with sleek trendy narratives. It’s a simple but question asking what the relationship is between the camera, the object and the world. We do not wish you to ‘learn’ something from these foreign films. Instead, we wish you to share their problems and make them those of your own. This could actually be what all the films for this year’s SIDOF might want to tell you.
SIDOF2008
독립영화전용관
Focus of the Year 