Get Reports from a Closed Country at Encounters 2009

Take Your Seat at Encounters 2009 to witness an African Legacy and the powers of a griot

Encounters Documentary Festival is South Africa’s premier film festival – each year the festival brings you world premiers, award winning films, and once-off screenings you can’t afford to miss. So grab a program, make your picks and head down to the Fest today!

18:30 – Burma VJ - Reporting from a Closed Country
Denmark / UK 2008 85min
Dir: Anders Høgsbro Østergaard

By turns enchanting, thrilling and sobering, this film uses collective footage of the courageous, tenacious, amateur video journalists to follow the personal victories and agonies, the perils and the camaraderie of the small, tight-knit counter-propaganda journalists of Burma.

18:30 - The Manuscripts of Timbuktu
South Africa 2008 87min
Dir: Zola Maseko

Using interviews with present scholars, historians and Imams and a recreation of the life of Ahmed Baba, this thorough documentary explores and celebrates the manuscripts’ legacy against the broader political, social and intellectual African context.

Maseko is a guest of the Festival and will attend the screening of his film on 4 July.

20:00 - Yandé Codou + Bronx Princess

Yandé Codou, griot of Senghor (La Griotte de Senghor)
Senegal / France 2008 52min
Dir: Angèle Diabang Brener

There is illuminating detail about the complex structure of polyphonic praise singing as well as the history of call-and-response and spoken poetry in African music; indeed, this is a film as much about a West African musical heritage as it is about a powerful woman and a cultural West African richness.

Brener is a guest of the Festival and travels courtesy of the French Embassy.

Bronx Princess
USA / Ghana 2008 30min
Dirs: Yoni Brook & Musa Suyeed

Bronx born and bred Rocky Otoo straddles two cultures and realities. Nearly 18, and excited by the prospect of freedom from her mother and being a princess in her royal Ghanaian father’s house, her future is set for confrontation and some home truths.

Brook’s warm film tells of generational and personal conflicts in a boisterous, ever-changing, often crazy immigrant community.

20:30 – Waltz with Bashir + Slaves

14:30 - Waltz with Bashir (Vals im Bashir)
Israel | Germany | France | USA | Finland | Switzerland | Belgium | Australia 2008 90min
Dir: Ari Folman

An atypical animated ‘memoir’ that subtly explores the brain’s ability to suppress a horrifying incident.

Nominated for the Best Foreign Film at the 2009 Academy Awards, this atypical animated ‘memoir’ subtly explores the brain’s ability - both individual and collective - to suppress a horrifying incident conducted under the guise of war.

Slaves (Slavar)
Sweden 2008 15min
Dirs: David Aronowitsch & Hanna Heilborn

Based on a 2003 interview of liberated children this is the director’s second immensely powerful, animated films, with and about children in difficult situations.

Aronowitsch & Heilborn are guests of the Festival and will attend screenings of their film.

Encounters South African International Documentary Festival 2009:

Date: 14 July 2009
Venue: Nu Metro Cinema
Location: V&A Waterfront, Cape Town
Time: 18:30 – 20:30
Price: R33 p/p*
Contact: +27(0)21 465 4686
Website: www.encounters.co.za

*Tickets can be purchased online on the Encounters website or at the V&A Waterfront box office

For a complete outline of the Encounters events taking place in Cape Town, including film synopsis, read our overview of the 2009 Encounters Documentary Film Festival.

For your monthly round up on what’s happening in and around Cape Town, be sure to subscribe to our popular Editor’s Picks Newsletter.