This documentary celebrates the power of the creative arts by profiling the successful Adugna Community Dance Theatre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

What began as an experimental project in the streets of Addis Ababa is now a vibrant, internationally acclaimed, success story. It is a story of a struggling urban population and of empowerment; a story of social outreach and advocacy and of feeding skills back into the community.

Oliver Ressler is an Austrian-born artist who produces projects in public space and films addressing forms of resistance and social alternatives. He has had solo exhibitions at Berkeley Art Museum; Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul; Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Egypt and The Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery, Kraków. His films have been screened around the world.

What should you do when you find out that 10 metres away from your apartment, on your kids’ playground, new buildings will be constructed? You take action, organise meetings with your fellow neighbours in the basement of the apartment block- the only communal space in the building- and try to fight together for your own rights.
Contemporary Bucharest, Romania: from one day to the next, the green spaces are disappearing because of the financial interests of a corrupt system.

The young offenders unit in Cēsis, Latvia: a place governed by its own codes, where the unwritten rules are more powerful than the sanctioned ones…

A young Roma inmate fears he may be killed. After a long spell in voluntary isolation, he applies to the governor for a transfer to the adult prison. Though just a boy, he has family members there who can help protect him.
Secretive and uncommunicative, the inmates of the unit are the victims as much as the perpetrators of their own crimes- and still children themselves…

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey was a prominent student activist in the Civil Rights and republican movements in Northern Ireland in the sixties. Her eloquence, humour and indomitable spirit over the intervening years have been an inspiration to those struggling for social justice.

She was the youngest woman MP in the British Parliament at the age of twenty one, was jailed for her part in the Battle of the Bogside, survived an assassination attempt on herself and her husband and now leads a cross-community organisation in County Tyrone.

The film follows key moments in her public life to date and her current reflections on these.
Introduction and Q&A with Director Lelia Doolan.

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey will lead a discussion on Human Rights, Class Struggle and Social Justice in the CCA Clubroom on Fri 21st Oct at 5.00pm.

The sequel to the award-wining ‘Punam’ shown at Document 3, ‘Big Sister Punam’ takes up the story of child labour in Nepal once again by revisiting the same family to see what happened next.

In 2005 Punam Tamang was nine, living in the Nepalese city of Bhaktapur. Since her mother died when she was only five, Punam, her last-born sister Rabina and her two-year-old brother Krishna saw little of their father, as he worked from sunrise to sundown in a rice factory in order to earn enough money for their school fees. And so during the daytime Punam assumed the role of head of the family, caregiver and homemaker.

And yet, they were lucky in a way: some of the parents of Punam’s friends did not make enough money to afford the
school fees. Instead of studying, these children had to work in a stone quarry or brick-making factory to help their families get by. The poor five-grade school she attended represented Punam’s symbol of hope. She believed that education was the only opportunity for improving their situation, and dreamed of becoming a teacher and helping other children like herself.

Four years later, Punam is now thirteen and her life has changed. What she and her siblings had managed to avoid up until then has become an inevitabiity as her story takes us to the local brick-making factory…
A beautifully crafted and powerful film about the hard facts of child labour and the dignity of some of those who are enmeshed by it.

The film will be screened with low sound and lighting – to enable babies and tots to accompany their mums, and to enable mums to leave and return as necessary.

Blanketmen charts the morale of Republican prisoners through the tumultuous period of the 1976-81 H-Block protest. Locked up for 24 hours a day, wrapped only in a blanket, denied any form of stimulus, beaten and degraded, the blanketmen displayed an indomitable spirit which saw them rise above everything their captors could inflict. In hardship they found humour; in silence they found song; in isolation they found each other; and together they fought, and they won.

Through the personal accounts of former prisoners the story of survival is brought to a new audience. Blanketmen is a fascinating insight into life during the protest, in particular it’s culmination with the deaths of 10 hunger strikers. 30 years later the h-block protest continues to ignite passions and stimulate debate all because of ordinary men who found it within themselves to never give up.

Government attacks on our welfare system represent “the biggest attack on the human rights of disabled people since the 1930s.”

A programme of short films including Camcorder Guerillas recent short “The Broadest Shoulders”, and a preview of our current film about privatisation and its effects on society’s most vulnerable.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion.

The everyday life of refugees in a Hungarian camp: four languages, four different types of homesickness, four traumas, four struggles. A chance for a fresh start in a foreign country…

Lia, Ahmed, Bebe and Usama came to Hungary from Georgia, Somalia, Ivory Coast and Lebanon and, if only for a brief period of time, became each others’ neighbours. All of them left their homeland for different reasons- war, family issues, physical or psychological suffering. Their faces still carry the story on them. Their bodies still bear the marks.

In Bicske, their ordeal continues in a different form. What if they actually get leave to remain? What if they have to start life over in an unknown country whose language they can hardly speak? Will they manage to find a job or an apartment? Will they be able to settle in a strange land, in a different climate?

‘Caught Between Two Worlds’ tries to shows what it feels like when you have to start from scratch in a country that isn’t home.

Migrant Rights Scotland will introduce the film and lead a Q&A with the audience afterwards.

Colours of Life is a display of cultural richness showcasing international dance styles and traditional costumes from AlbScott and Clan Macondo. It illustrates the way different cultures use dance to bring joy and colour to life, to overcome hardship, and to celebrate the human spirit and desire to create, perform and share our stories.

In consejos comunales, the people of Venezuela collectively decide about the community’s concerns. These councils, built from the grass-roots, aim to create a form of self-government, parallel to the institutional framework.

The screening will be followed by a conversation and Q&A exploring the role of politically engaged art in protest and human rights issues, led by Katarzyna Kosmala.

Katarzyna Kosmala, PhD, is a reader in Visual Culture and Organization at the University of the West of Scotland, a visiting research fellow at GEXcel, Institute of Thematic Gender Studies, Linköping University & Örebro University, Sweden and a curator and freelance art writer.

www.ressler.at

Courage is a short participatory film made by asylum seekers and refugees for the 60th Anniversary of the Refugee Convention. It was commissioned by the Scottish Refugee Council.
Rosa, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, and Christian from the Democratic Republic of Congo, both arrived in the UK as children, fleeing violence and persecution in their birth countries. This film shows how The Refugee Convention, created to protect the rights of people like Rosa, is still saving lives 60 years later.

Does each gesture really make a difference? Can music and dance be weapons of peace? After several years, travelling over five continents, Lara encountered growing numbers of people who committed their lives to promoting change:

In 2003, on the eve of the Iraq war, director Lara Lee embarked on a journey to better understand a world increasingly embroiled in conflict and, as she saw it, heading for self-destruction.

In Iran graffiti and rap become tools in fighting government repression. In Burma monks acting in the non-violent tradition of Gandhi take on a dictatorship. In Brazil musicians reach out to slum kids and transform guns into guitars. And in the Palestinian refugee camps of the Lebanon, photography, music, and film offer a voice to those who are rarely heard.

Through these stories, Cultures of Resistance explores how art and creativity can be ammunition in the battle for peace and justice.

Trouble. Family. Prison. Drugs. Relationships. Violence. Admir comes from Bosnia. His family moved to Switzerland as asylum seekers when he was ten. What Admir knows best is violence- experienced or perpetrated. Admir is twenty years old.

One young Roma talks about his life before leaving Bosnia and his life since in Geneva- whilst awaiting impending deportation back to Bosnia…

An interesting take on the Kafkaesque quality of life in the old East Germany (DDR), possibly the most spy-infested state in history:

In a personal “truth and reconciliation” session, Peter- who was expelled from university, then jailed, then deported as a subversive, gets together with former friend ‘Hans’- who was actually spying on him for the Stasi. Together they read over the latter’s confidential reports- the very documents which led to Peter’s arrest.

Like everything else in the DDR, nothing is simple or straightforward in their story: where others were blackmailed into working for the Stasi, Hans volunteered out of ideological conviction- then came to genuinely like Peter and value his friendship… whilst of course continuing to undermine him in his reports.

Remarkably, Peter doesn’t feel any bitterness towards Hans- he’s even grateful to him, in a way: Peter has since found out that he had 39 different people informing on him. And Hans is the only one to admit it…

A good insight into the insidious nature of the informer network of the DDR and how it reached into every aspect of life, poisoning even the most intimate and trusted relationships.

‘This presentation demonstrates a prototype of the Ethical Governor – a key component in the ethical projection of unmanned autonomous force…’
Animation drawing a parallel between computer games and army software which decides when and what is a legitimate target.

Time for employers and government to Face the facts and the FACKs, to acknowledge death at work is a violent crime that isn’t rare and is rarely accidental. Over 1,000 people are killed in work-related incidents every year – many more than homicides – due to employers’ negligence and failure to comply in laws on health and safety. Yet few employers face any enforcement action at all, those that are prosecuted often receive paltry fines and hardly any directors go to prison for the decisions they made which led to someone being killed. In fact many employers are repeat offenders and some become serial killers.

Face the FACKS: The human face of workplace killing was made in memory of: Samuel Adams, Michael Adamson, Steven Burke, Andy Herbertson, Mark Wright, Lewis Murphy, Andrew Hutin, Annette Doyle, Graham Meldrum, Gordon Field, Craig Whelan and everyone killed at work.

Louise Adamson, founder member of FACK will introduce the screening and lead a Q&A with the audience afterwards.

Zanda is a 28-year-old woman, trying to survive with her two children in a god-forsaken Latvian village. Valdis is serving a year’s sentence in prison for physically abusing them.

‘Family Instinct’ follows Zanda over the course of a year as she tries to cope with the hardships of poverty and the amorous and frequently drunken attentions of several local men. Finally the local community force her to make a difficult choice: to stay with Valdis or with her children. But Valdis is due for release from jail…

An unflinching look at the lives of people on the extreme margins of Latvian society, the film draws you into a claustrophobic world which is at times shocking and heartbreaking, but whose central characters can still rise to humour and even optimism in the face of terrible adversity.

‘Family Instinct’ was winner of the International Competition at Silverdocs.

The extraordinary and enigmatic story of Jacques Foccart – the modest public official who stayed in the background but ran French foreign policy in Africa across the reign of three presidents…

In a stylish and probing film using extensive archive footage to great effect, Foccart’s power to make and break the leaders of a host of states across “independent’ Sub-Saharan Africa is explored, and the French government’s reluctance to leave colonialism behind in anything but name.

A kind of detective story about the last gasp of imperialism and it’s changing face in the year of the fiftieth anniversary of the formal independence of France’s former African colonies.

Friday 21 October 5.00pm–6.30pm Talk & Discussion CCA Clubroom

Bernadette McAliskey:
Human Rights, Class Struggle & Social Justice

The challenge to the ‘survival of the fittest’ view of humanity comes from one of three theoretical perspectives: Human Rights, Social Justice or Class. The dynamic for real social change in the world is where these three, despite the tensions between them, meet in action.

A new documentary by award-winning Scottish director Katrina McPherson about improvising dance artist Kirstie Simson. Combining specially filmed performance, documentary footage and in-depth interviews, Force of Nature reveals Kirstie’s passionate belief in the power of dance to bring people together and transform lives. The film also features top international dance artists Michael Schumacher (US/Holland) Kenzo Kusuda (Japan), Dai Jain (China/US),

Simon Ellis (UK/Australia and the dancers of Scottish Dance Theatre.
Force of Nature was completed in July 2011 and has been screened at the Universal Hall and at the Marriott centre, Salt Lake City, USA.

48 years of dictatorship. Susana de Sousa’s riveting portrait of 20th century Portugal, through the pictures of dozens of political prisoners. This haunting documentary opens with a brief description of the regime that ruled Portugal from 1926 to 1974: “Antonio de Oliveira Salazar was its leader and political ideologue. The church, the army and the secret police (PIDE-DGS) were its pillars.”

Black and white pictures of men and women taken by their interrogators are re-examined by those to whom the faces belong. Young or old, urban or rural, working class or bourgeois, all were subject to humiliation. One in particular refused to succumb. His face is balled up in a resolute downward-looking grimace. “I either came up with an expression of contempt or I would do it like this – even when being beaten and barbarously tortured. From me, they did not get the pleasure of seeing a tortured face.”

The unidentified voices, recount the degradation of being interrogated, beaten, touched up, forced to relieve themselves in front of their torturers.

They talk about how their experiences in detention went on to affect their subsequent lives. For many, it is the first time they have spoken about what they endured under Portugal’s fascist regime- a subject that remains largely unexamined today.

Although 48 is ostensibly about Portugal under Salazar, the photos that are brought to life in such a hypnotic and
unforgettable manner tell the stories of all political prisoners, all those who are tortured, wherever they are in the world.

Introduction and Q&A with Andrea Kuhn, Director, Nuremberg International Human Rights Film Festival.
Part of an international exchange between Nuremberg & Document, two human rights film festivals from twinned cities.

“Do you read the newspapers? Do you watch news on TV or listen to it on the radio? Do you think the media offers truthful information? Do you consider yourself to be well informed?”

Starting from this basic questionnaire, Fourth Estate examines the nature of contemporary mass media- its power to form as much as inform public opinion, and what that says about the democratic health of our societies in the age of information.

A rigorous analysis of the media and its economic and ideological interests, unveiling the hidden mechanisms behind these huge machines of influence.

It seems like almost every day in contemporary China a new city springs up from the fields, a new industrial zone appears on what was agricultural land as the country continues to develop its economic infrastructure.

Workers are needed for this on a huge scale; some 150 million people have already set out from the underdeveloped rural provinces to earn their living in the growth centres of China.

Tokyo-based Swiss photographer Andreas Seibert has been working since 2002 on a photographic documentation of the life and work of China’s migrant rural workers. From 2006-2008, Swiss filmmaker Villi Hermann followed him from the booming southern provinces to the fallow land of the north as they visited migrant workers at their workplaces and travelled with them back to their hometowns to visit the families left behind.

With its combination of photographs and video images, ‘From Somewhere to Nowhere’ conveys a unique impression of the scale of this epic modern migration- arguably the largest in human history.

The assault on Gaza in 2008 by the Israeli Defence Force was well-covered by the international media. We’ve all seen the images replayed a thousand times. Or have we? And what of the people who made it their job to get the world those images?

A selection of Palestinian journalists/camera operators describe their experiences of trying to report from frontline Gaza amidst the assault and the effect on them as individuals of what they witnessed, recorded and lived through. Cutting between interviews and the- sometimes literally- raw footage they shot of carnage, death and destruction, this builds into a powerful discourse on the moral dilemma of media in a war zone- does your duty as a journalist to keep on filming the horror as an act of witness outweigh your duty as a human being to put down the camera and come to the aid of the afflicted?

Be warned: this film contains deeply harrowing uncensored images that were not shown in full on any international news network- the real images of war which the conventional media routinely edits out as too graphic and disturbing. You won’t see this version of the Gaza assault on the BBC or CNN any time soon…
The reflections of the journalists on what it was like to witness these events yet keep on filming are intelligent, articulate and tragic. Taking its place beside previous Document highlights such as ‘Prisoner Of The Caucasus’ which did the same for the conflict in Chechnya, ‘Gaza On Air’ provides a sobering post-mortem on the politics of the assault and a thought-provoking meditation on the role of media in war.

Sixteen year old Srey Leak and her two seventeen year old friends Me Nea and Cheata all had their virginities sold by their parents for what in Cambodian terms was a significant amount of money. Now that they have lost their virginity and therefore their ‘value’ as women, they are left with little choice but to work in Cambodia’s huge sex industry.

Part of the reason they do this is the pressure they have to financially support their families, and for Me Nea and Cheata, their children. They work as indirect sex workers in the form of karaoke and massage girls, and as direct sex workers, selling themselves on the streets of Phnom Penh. Contrary to what many Westerners believe, most of the demand is from local, not foreign, sex tourists.

The Girls of Phnom Penh is a story of sisterhood through adversity; a friendship that offers each girl a very simple form of support as they struggle to balance their childhood dreams and teenage expectations of life with the very adult lives they lead by night.

A short film made by and featuring four young people in care about their dreams for the future.

Commissioned from mediaco-op by Who Cares? Scotland.

Here I Am is a collaboration between MIN’s Music and Theatre Production and Barrowland Ballet with a cast of adults and children from people seeking asylum, refugee, BME, migrant and local communities. Alongside professional dancers and musicians they explore and express how people struggle and suffer even when they are safe, and how their children bring light to their lives, helping them to find the strength to move forward. It features poems by Remzje Sherifi and choregraphy by Natasha Gilmore

Margaret Jaconelli purchased her Dalmarnock home in 1976. She has lived as the sole remaining resident of Ardenlea St since 2002. With the Commonwealth Games fast approaching, the council wish to demolish the whole street which occupies the site of the proposed Athlete’s Village.

All the other residents have been re-housed, but Margaret, as one of the few who owns her property, refuses to move until offered adequate compensation. The Council won’t negotiate. They’re working to a deadline. For four years she goes on a one-woman crusade to save her family from being evicted whilst the rest of Dalmarnock is flattened around them. Then at dawn one day in March 2011, over 100 police and sheriff officers arrive…

Mixing still photography, video reportage and interviews, this film follows Margaret’s story from March 2008 through to her eviction in March 2011.

One of a series of short films on issues surrounding the redevelopment of Glasgow by photographer and filmmaker Chris Leslie.

Few people outside the world of academia have ever heard his name, but Gene Sharp’s writings on non-violent revolution (most notably ‘From Dictatorship to Democracy’, a 93-page, 198-step guide to toppling dictators, available free for download in 40 languages) have influenced a new generation of protesters living under authoritarian regimes who work for democratic change.

His ideas have taken root and his media-aware techniques have been deployed in places as diverse as Burma in the 1980’s against the ruling cadre, Serbia in 2000 in the protests which led to the downfall of Milosevic, right up to the Syria of today as protestors throng the streets of Hama and Damascus and the cellphone camera evidence appears on your TV news the same night.

But what of his amanuensis Colonel Tom? Where Sharp is the thinker and academic exploring philosophical concepts of freedom from the quiet of his office in Boston, Tom is the man of action, putting them into practise- a decorated Vietnam Veteran and former military hawk who became persuaded by Sharp’s ideas that non-violent regime change is more effective than military intervention or armed revolution, he now tours the world as the practical implementer to Sharp’s theorist acting as a’consultant’ to assorted revolutionary movements…

And while Sharp is arguably putting himself above or aside from politics in viewing philosophies of liberation as serving a universal good that can be adapted to combat the particulars of any repressive political system anywhere, what is the greater good that Tom seeks to serve, and where exactly do his affiliations ultimately lie? Is it a coincidence that many of the regimes he seeks to destabilise are on the standing US hit list of states unfriendly to their global interests?

The jury is perhaps still out on that one…

A fascinating and absorbing film on tactics of resistance which will be instantly recogniseable from news footage of demonstrations anywhere in the world over the last 10-20 years, and which covers a broad swathe of conflicts in the modern era, ‘How To Start A Revolution’ is definitely worth a look for all those interested in the discourse of contemporary protest in a media-led age.

There are now 7 billion residents in our global village. One hundred of them come together to explore what it means to live there today.

Through conversation, reflection, dance and movement, staff and pupils of Holyrood High School in Edinburgh examine the realities of ‘what it means to be human’ in the 21st century. This film tries to capture some of their insights as they acknowledge our competing needs in this diversity of cultures, beliefs and languages.

A Soviet family searching for a modest domestic paradise is swept into an immense disaster. This magically animated film combines drawing, photography and video to capture the surreal emotions of a too-real tragedy: Chernobyl 1986.

Leonid grew up in the village next to the reactor. The catastrophe broke his life, ruined his health, and threatened his unborn child when his work took him right into the contaminated zone. This animated film tells his story.
A striking and rather beautiful film reminiscent of ‘Waltz With Bashir’ in using animated sequences to depict unrecorded historical reality, with a set of simple and moving testimonies at its heart, and one decent, everyday couple.

September 8th 1979: on this day, a massacre of Iranian citizens took place. It was the same month in which the director of this film was born…
(free entry to Zanzibar Musical Club)

Sunday 23 October 12.00noon–1.30pm CCA 4 Shorts Programme

Iran About

Emilio Casalini, Italy, 2010, 27 mins

After the killing years of the Iran-Iraq War, a new generation arose, the children left behind: demographically a large proportion of the Iranian population of today is under 30 years of age.

‘Iran About’ is a journey into contemporary Iranian society through the voices of many young people who, anonymously, speak freely about what makes up everyday reality for them: the prohibitions, privations and even mortal risks taken in order to obtain what others take for granted- a bottle of wine or the chance to strike up a relationship…

A film about some of the issues which formed the background to the 2009 protests on the streets of Iran.

A short documentary developed and produced with young people in North & East Glasgow to raise awareness about health, wellbeing and suicide prevention.

Jimmy McIntosh, MBE, campaigns daily for disabled rights. Nothing can stop him, especially not his own Cerebral Palsy. A day in the life of Jimmy McIntosh, seen from his point of view.

In Managua, Nicaragua, teenager Sujeylin Aguiler raises her daughter Karla on the same streets she has been calling home for the past eight years. Living in a city park as part of a larger group of youngsters, mother and baby struggle to reach the little one’s first birthday as the baby’s father struggles with his own dependency on crack.

In a world of seemingly endemic addictions and homelessness, where children are raised by parents who are little more than children themselves, strength of character and human decency sometimes win through regardless. Beautifully told and full of hope, ‘Karla’s Arrival’ offers an intense personal story about second generation street children.

Between 12 and 14 February 2011, following uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, approximately five thousand people landed on the shores of Lampedusa. Video footage details one such landing, featuring oral testimony by volunteers, local inhabitants, and refugees.

First time local filmmaker Deryck de Maine Beaumont screens his work in progress – My Egypt. Inspired by what was happening in Egypt in 2011 he took a camera and went there from Glasgow. This screening and workshop will look at Deryck’s footage and talk about the development of his first documentary film.

In the densely forested hills above Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the Moroccan coast, 57 young Indian migrants await their fate in a shantytown community they’ve built to avoid deportation.

They protest. They play cricket. They talk to their families back home via Skype. The film accompanies them in their daily trials as they scramble to survive, waiting to cross the last 14 km that separate them from Europe. But will they make it?

Two women in a space. They are dancing. Their relationship moves through different moods and states.

Their characters are gradually revealed through fragments of action. The significance of the moment, whether solitary or between them, is explored as time is slowed down, stretched, speeded up, repeated and stopped.
Moment was awarded the ‘Best Screen Choreography’ prize at the IMZ Dance Screen Festival in Monaco 2000.

It’s hard starting over in a new land with a new language and a different set of values, where even the everyday conventions seem unconventional to you. It can be harder still if you’re a child.

The Bilingual Support Unit at Shawlands Academy in Glasgow has built an international reputation through offering support to pupils with little or no English language skills. The children have come from all over the world: some fleeing persecution, others whose families are working or studying in Glasgow. Over the course of time teacher Abdellatif Faithi has filmed their stories and activities as both an archive and a learning tool. My Journey is a work in progress based on this in which the pupils share their experiences of life, of leaving home and starting over in a new and strange country.

Peter continues his personal journey to document how bullying affects people with learning disabilities as well as their families.

North Edinburgh Social History Group are a collective of older people who have been actively involved in the community for over 30 years. Working in partnership with Community Learning and Development, City of Edinburgh Council, they have produced a photographic exhibition and 50 page publication centred on the history of the North Edinburgh community.This documentary film, Never Give Up, telling the story of community activism in the area down the years, was also produced in partnership with Pilton Video.

Southern Italy is changing: what was once a place of emigration has become one of immigration due to the influx of migrants from Africa, Romania and the Ukraine. Moreover, the Northern League’s institutionalised discrimination through xenophobic laws constrain more and more migrants to move south, where proper infrastructure and the resources to accommodate this vast number of people are missing. Amidst violence and exploitation, the scant resources available are shared as best they can be.

Anne Wallace once had a dream to help Glasgow’s working women. Soon after she had a double decker bus, and the Ministry of Salt and Light.

What really happened at the 2001 G8 summit in Genova- and how exactly did the mass peaceful protest turn into the running street battle it became, a nightmare of violence, destruction and the tragic death of one protestor?

Intercutting broadcast news and independent media footage with the eye of an artist as much as a documentarist, the filmmaker fashions a kind of polemic from the raw material which builds into a powerfully intense and visceral experience.

A well-crafted and original piece of filmmaking, ‘On Power’ feels like a personal essay on democracy at its limits, and the role of the media in managing contradictory perceptions of the same events.

Palestinians in Gaza are depicted either as terrorists or as helpless victims. The Awajah family challenge both portrayals. Caught up in the Israeli assault of 2008, their son was killed and both parents injured. Now homeless and living in a refugee camp, they tell their story. Through it, the larger tragedy of Gaza is exposed, and the courage and resilience of its people shines through

A drama documentary exploring attitudes to drink made by a group of young people from YAIS (Youth Alcohol Information Service) in Easterhouse.

The town of Donetsk sits in the old coal belt of eastern Ukraine. Here most people still work for low wages in the rundown mines, while a new class in designer suits with smart phones and media savvy make a lot of money.

No matter which side of the social divide you are on, coming from Donetsk you will almost certainly be an opponent of the Orange Revolution and a fan of the local football team, Shakhtar Donetsk. Billionaire Akhmetov invests heavily in the club, which is becoming a major European force as, packed with star Brazilian players, they make their way towards a victory in the UEFA cup final.

Yet this sporting success funded by an oligarch’s personal fortune only seems to highlight the wider social and political stagnation of the region. Off the pitch, for the ageing miners who are also the club’s most enthusiastic supporters, the outlook appears bleak as they attempt to keep their ramshackle mine open in the fading hope of future investment…

An affectionate satire on football, enthusiasm, oligarchs, and sport as a tool of power.

What happens to African migrants once granted political refugee status? What challenges do they face and what are their prospects for a decent life in Italy?
In Turin, an abandoned clinic has been squatted by more than 200 refugees since December 2008. All of whom are legal.

Set between a cinema and a street market in a working-class neighbourhood, this 5-story building is now inhabited by Somali and Sudanese refugees, forming a small African island in the heart of a European city, yet isolated from the rest of the world. There is running water in one room per floor- and 80 people on each floor. There is electricity- but no heating…

Our School follows three Roma children in a rural Transylvanian village who are among the pioneer participants in an initiative to integrate the ethnically segregated Romanian schools. When their district is ordered desegregated, Alin, Benjamin, and Dana set out for the city school, looking forward to an education and new friendships, even as funds earmarked for integration are questionably used to build a “Roma-only” school in their village. Their innocent optimism quickly sours when the children are met with the hostility of peers and teachers alike.

Shot over four years, this portrait of rural village life and its rhythms fosters an admiration for the children’s spirit in the face of shocking instances of prejudice and ignorance. Their story touches on issues ranging from institutionalized racism in public education to the intractability of poverty, and defines the Roma children’s struggle in the starkest of terms regarding human rights. “Our School” is an absorbing, infuriating, and ultimately bittersweet story of tradition versus progress.

Winner of Silverdocs 2011 Sterling Award for Best US Feature.

Young Demir dreams of a wedding. But his Roma tower block on the outskirts of a provincial town in Bulgaria is no place for romance. 25 years ago it had all you could ask of panel socialist heaven: from parquet floors to intercom, hot and cold running water, street lamps, benches under murmuring apple trees.

Someone called the place the Paradise Hotel – and the name stuck. But with the years the block gradually changed. The parquet disappeared. The water stopped. The lights went off.

But each of the 1500 inhabitants has their own idea how to get from Paradise Lost back to the dream.
And if you cross the field behind Paradise Hotel where heaven and earth meet, you will see Bozhidar “The God Given”, who protects everyone from evil- and the dangers of excessive happiness- in a documentary about panel integration, love, misery, a lot of dreams, a little lyricism and one Gypsy wedding.

It was with great enthusiasm that I found out that I was expecting my first child. While I was awaiting the arrival of my bundle of joy, I never expected my labour would turn into a nightmare and that my baby and I would end up at death’s door…

In a remote corner of the West of Ireland sits Broadhaven Bay. It is the perfect picture postcard, where the high cliffs of Erris Head and the Stags of Broadhaven stand sentry at the mouth of the bay against the mighty Atlantic, as if protecting the delicate golden sands of Glengad beach and the tiny village of Rossport, which nestles behind the dunes.

However, this peaceful tranquility belies the turmoil that lies beneath, and the unique nature of the coastline which has sustained generations of farmers and fishermen, has also delivered to Shell Oil the perfect landfall for the Corrib Gas Pipeline.

In the most dramatic clash of cultures in modern Ireland, the rights of farmers over their fields, and of fishermen to their fishing grounds, has come in direct conflict with one of the worlds most powerful oil companies. When the citizens look to their state to protect their rights, they find that the state has put Shell’s right to lay a pipeline over their own.

The Pipe is a story of a community tragically divided, and how they deal with a pipe that could bring economic prosperity or destruction of a way of life shared for generations.

Mumtaz Ahmed stands on the deck of his ship. He is a sailor who hasn’t seen the sea for months. And months. And months. A captain deserted by his crew. The last man on board.

When the cargo vessel Stratis II limped into the port of Barcelona in late 2007 after a hard storm in the Mediterranean, it was immediately condemned as unseaworthy by the port authorities. The owners abandoned it. As did the rest of the crew. It was Mumtaz’ first voyage as master of the ship. He was owed a lot of money in back wages.

So he waits: to get paid. For someone else to buy the ship. It’s a war of nerves between Mumtaz and luck. Maybe something will turn up. Maybe he won’t go down with his ship after all.
An odd, affectionate film about a man of principle caught in a loophole of international maritime law.

There is a forgotten conflict in the Western Sahara that doesn’t often excite world media interest, that has continued for decades, and that pits its indigenous inhabitants- the Saharawi people- against the Morroccan government.

Colonised by Spain then occupied by Morrocco when Spain left, the wall which the Morroccan government built across the Western Sahara is said to be second only in scale to the Great Wall of China- and may have provided a useful precedent for the Israeli ‘security fence’.

The accounts which followed outline a history of repression, struggle, secret prisons, and the strange reluctance of the United Nations to broker a solution.

Through a mixture of personal testimony, archive and sometimes highly graphic imagery, this film recaps the history of the desert war the world has chosen to look away from.

Facilitated by artists, including Rachel Mimiec and Katie Bruce, people of all ages are free to enter and engage with the spirit of The Public Square. Responding to materials on offer, The Public Square Manifesto, the artwork Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies, billboard, 2007 by Oliver Ressler, and, the backdrop of the Document film festival, participants are invited to create their own protest artwork around the theme of play and children’s rights.

Developed by the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) and Rachel Mimiec, as part of Playable Spaces, for Inspiration 2011.

Ramallah Road: malaise, hopelessness and boredom rule on this road, which used to connect Jerusalem and Ramallah, and which was the economic vein of Al-Ram on the West Bank. Now the wall put up by Israel splits the road, and the local Palestinians have lost even more land, as well as the ties to their fellow Palestinians in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile a team of young street artists are spraying a copy of a text 2.5 km long down the wall towards Ramallah till it is almost touching the infamous checkpoint of Qalandia. The text is an open letter written by Farid Esack, a South African anti-apartheid activist, who compares the Palestinian situation to Apartheid…
After 40 years of fruitless struggle, what is the right way to resist?

Sometimes you go in, all guns blazing, determined to challenge the perceived act of injustice, and go home happy, knowing you’ve maybe not set the world to rights, but hey, you whisper to yourself on the bus home: “At least I had a go.”

Other days you sit there slumped in a corner feeling like the fight has been well and truly knocked out of you.
Your taxi driver’s racist, your partner is making impossible demands of you and you’ve been shafted at work again. How do we register our discontent with everyday life? Playwright Wendy Miller leads a workshop exploring Resistance In Everyday Life. What forms of personal protest do we invoke and why, treading the metaphorical line between silence and violence…

A meditation on Contact Improvisation. Multiple layers of perception emerge through the moving cameras, the editing and the sound track, creating a multi-perspective experience of dance.

The concept of observation is important as this happens between the dancers and the cameras and amongst the dancers themselves, not only through sight but also through hearing and energy.

Commissioned as part of the Arts Council England’s ‘Capture’ series, Sense-8’ has been screened at many venues around the world, including Sydney Opera House and the  Reel Moves tour of Australia and New Zealand.

A short documentary narrated through a personal experience of partner rape, revealing the wider implications of rape myths. Sharon, a senior lecturer in Psychology, explains the prevalence of acquaintance rape, countering the common myth that rapists are strangers. She also explains that only a minority of victim’s receive justice.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with the audience, Laura Connett, the filmmaker and Sandy Brindley, Rape Crisis Scotland.

The Basque Country, or that part of it currently contained within the political boundaries of Spain, is filled with political slogans: every second wall has its mural or its portion of graffitti that protests or puts the case for independence: despite the fact these are illegal and can get the culprit a jail sentence if caught in flagrante. And every time they are washed off, someone puts them back up the following night.

Through the simple expedient of stopping people in the street and asking them what the slogans mean, the filmmakers build up a fascinating picture of a people with a strong sense of national identity but conflicted views as to how to pursue their aspirations for autonomy from the Spanish state- some in favour of the armed struggle maintained until recently by ETA and its offshoots, and some of gradual political change within a parliamentary framework.
Through interviews with a spokesman for a political party working for independence, a young female activist arrested under Spanish anti-terrorism laws, and an anonymous political artist responsible for much of the graffitti, the case is made that like many other countries, the Spanish state may have cashed in on the post-9/11 paranoia to upgrade their anti-terrorism legislation in a way that could be used not only against those who commit acts of violence, but to muzzle any form of public dissent.

A thoughtful and informative film about the current state of play regarding Basque autonomy and the mixed opinions on the way forward held by the Basque people themselves.

Recorded in Armenia in Yerevan’s largest bazaar, the film follows the market trader’s struggle to survive the crisis of a post-Socialist reality that has closed many local factories and dissolved social safety nets.

Sirens, screams, laughter, singing, bartering: these are the sounds sweeping into the rooms of Downtown Los Angeles’ old forgotten hotels. Their inhabitants’ stories tell of lives lived on the margins. Some residents stay for a few months. Others have lived there for as long as 40 years. According to Charlie, the desk clerk at the King Edward Hotel, “you can be anything you want; you can do anything you want – and nobody gives a damn!” After all, we’re on America’s most notorious skid row, also known to old-timers as the Nickel.

Director Alina Skrzeszewska lived in one of the hotels for a year and a half while shooting ‘songs from the nickel’. The result is a strikingly intimate portrait of people living in this largely invisible community. Their lives speak of both desperation and beauty, while subtly resisting the encroaching gentrification. A layered image of America’s diverse urban landscape unfolds, with all its fractures and traumas, as well as its potential.

There is a place is a collaboration between Tibetan Chinese dancer/ choreographer Sang Jijia and Scottish screendance artists Simon Fildes and Katrina McPherson, shot on location in the Scottish Highlands.

Produced in 2010 by Goat Media, in association with Dance House Glasgow and City Contemporary Dance Company Hong Kong.

Awards: Best Screendance short, San Francisco Dance Film festival, 2011: Best Screendance short Dance Camera West, Los Angeles, USA, 201; Special Jury mention, Napolidanza, Il Coreografo Elettronico, Italy, 2011.

Friday 21 October 10.00am–11.00am CCA 4

ThulaMama

www.thulamama.co.uk/main.htm

hula Mama is a singing group where mums and babies aged from birth to walking, come together to learn and sing songs and lullabies from around the world all sung in a cappella harmony.

The screening will be followed by a session of ThulaMama, hosted by Cath Campbell, in the Electron Club. T

In the little village of Chotian, Punjab, India, the farmer’s cooperative society registered 25 farmer suicides related to debt in the last 7 years. The farmers drank pesticides to end their lives.

Indian physicist Dr. Vandana Shiva blames the the ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960s- an idea of Nobel Prize-winner Norman Borlaug to end starvation in the Third World, The Green Revolution led to increased food production but the environmental, social and cultural price that had to be paid was high- amongst the unintended consequences for the farmers of the Punjab, these included disharmony, debt and suicide…
‘Toxic Tears’ tells the personal stories of those for whom The Green Revolution was less than a blessing.

Last summer in Dundee, eight young men took their own lives. The city was in shock as the deaths mounted, week on week. This film revisits their relatives, six months later. Giving up on asking ‘why?’ parents are trying to get on with their lives. One mother, Carol, now has something new to live for: a granddaughter.

Voices From The Barras celebrates the heritage and history of Glasgow’s World Famous Market, The Barras.  The film focuses on the Barras community’s memories and stories, past and present, from traders and stallholders to family members and customers.

This is the story of a man who during World War II served in two warring armies and was a prisoner in both Nazi and Soviet concentration camps. A story about history, chance and fate…

The story of a group of ordinary men- neither specialists nor technicians- who were sent to Chernobyl following the nuclear accident in 1986 to help, then forgotten about. This film follows their struggle for recognition and justice.

In a world that has proved to be bleak and inhumane, three asylum seekers and refugees find a stream of light in the midst of the darkness. Composed from conversations and interviews with members of Maryhill Integration Network, Vox Asylum tells the real-life stories of three people who fled their homeland and found new hope in Glasgow.

Gabriel Belhassan is the singer and leading songwriter in the successful Israeli band ‘Aljir’. He is also Bipolar, and his condition both provides powerful material for his writing and hinders his ability to continue as a professional performer.

As his mental state deteriorates, the band breaks up and Gabriel returns to the security of his family’s farm. The film follows his attempts to restart his career, write new songs and record an album. But the pressures of returning to the public arena threaten his mental health once more.

Cutting between observation, interview and video diary in which Gabriel seems to use the camera as ‘evidence’ for himself- an objective way of examining moods he perhaps has no control over to afterwards try and better understand his own struggle- ‘Wandering Eyes’ is a warm and humane film about a talented man going through a very bad time, as he manages to turn the war with his demons into the constructive catharsis that artistic expression can sometimes be.

A chance to see that rare thing, an uplifiting film about mental health and a condition that is itself rarely examined in documentary filmmaking.

On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Five of these UN member countries are today the biggest arms dealers in the world.

An experimental montage of newsreel images set to a hard electronic score, ’War Disease’ works to an almost hypnotic climax as nearly all the filmed conflicts of the last 70 years are hammered at you like a bad acid trip of suffering. Anti-arms trade agitprop at its most intense.

Drawing on Popular Education and Theatre of the Oppressed techniques, this workshop will invite verbal, visual and physical responses to the film ‘Cultures of Resistance’.

Popular Education creates spaces for the collective production of knowledge and insight and builds on the experiences of those participating. Theatre of the Oppressed physicalises oppression enabling participants to use theatre as a rehearsal for reality.

This workshop is presented by So We Stand, an emerging grassroots movement working for empowering social change to develop multiracial politics and self defence strategies for environmental and climate justice. More info at www.sowestand.com

A community-based, participatory documentary about women’s struggles in Govan and Greater Glasgow.

Taking its inspiration from the Govan Rent Strikes of 1915 led by Mrs Barbour’s Army, and based on the experiences of those involved in the project, this film celebrates figures such as Mary Barbour and Agnes McLean, and the campaign for equal pay in the industries and trade unions of Clydeside.

Produced and directed by Kirsten MacLeod with members of The Govan Seniors Film Group and the Platform Mental Health Group, in association with Plantation Productions & The University of the West of Scotland.

At sunset in the streets of the old town, the music clubs of Zanzibar buzz with the joyful sounds of Taarab, the unique music of the island, whose style reflects two millennia of cultural exchange and its place at the crossroads of the spice route.

Bearer of cultural identity and living tradition, the performance of Taarab is instrinsically linked to both the ceremonial and everyday life of the island. Its rhythms accompany the listener on every step of existence- from the most solemn to the most blissful moments.

Featuring artists such as the midwife and healer Bi Kidude, one of the most revered of all Taarab singers, this beautiful film immerses us in the colour, warmth and diversity of Zanzibar’s little known Muslim culture and the Taarab poets- custodians of a dynamic musical heritage that must assert itself in the face of tourism and economic change.