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Real to Reel

(Click for full image) London

6th - 12th November 2006

To celebrate the 7th edition of France’s annual worldwide Documentary Film Month (Le Mois du Film Documentaire) Ciné lumière and the Médiathèque of the Institut français have joined forces to present Real to Réel, a week of films and encounters with key documentarists and producers, complemented by a documentary film workshop for students from the NFTS and La Femis.

The season aims to provide an insight into documentary filmmaking on both sides of the Channel... and beyond. Comparing the direct cinema tradition of the UK with cinéma verité style from France, Real to Réel will explore the differences and similarities in documentary practise in both countries.

Running through the films in the season are three main themes: justice, resistance and the poetry and humour of people’s every-day lives. The line-up includes a close-up look at a family during the painful weeks of the trial of their son’s murderer, Au dela de la Haine, a compassionate account of the legal system in small-town Cameroon, Sisters in Law, and the UK premiere of Christian Delage’s extraordinary film Nuremberg examining the role of documentary films at the Nuremberg Trial.

Testifying to the resistance of local people in war-torn countries are such films as Avi Mograbi’s Avenge but One of my Two Eyes, exploring the continuing cycles of violence in the Occupied Territories, and the the three films by Sean McAllister Settlers, Minders and the multi-award-winning Liberace of Baghdad, following a former Iraqi concert pianist fallen on hard times during the latest war in Iraq. Meanwhile, Claire Simon’s Coute que Coute and Black Gold by Marc and Nick Francis record resistance of a different sort – the struggles of one small firm to stay afloat and the fight of one Ethiopian union boss to get a fair price for the coffee produced by his farmers.

Sean McAllister and Claire Simon will both attend the festival for post-film Q&As with the audience and, in an exceptional event following the screening of Simon's film Mimi, to discuss their different approaches to documentary filmmaking. Michael Grigsby, will join us for a discussion of his work in the context of the Free Cinema Movement with Lindsay Anderson's biographer Paul Ryan and British Film Historian Christophe Dupin. Finally, Christian Delage will join Toby Haggith of the Imperial War Museum Archives to talk about his work with the American Holocaust Museum on John Ford's footage from the Nuremberg Trial which forms the basis of his film Nuremberg.

For more information on the festival see the festival website: www.institut-francais.org.uk/realtoreel/
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Link: http://www.institut-francais.org.uk/realtoreel/ Email: box (dot) office (at) ambafrance (dot) org (dot) uk Telephone: +44 (0)20 7073 1350

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