MOVIE TIPS

Carta Azulejo (Tile Mail)

Director: Gergő Somogyvári/Judit Feszt, Hungary 2008, 23 min.

Nobert left his native Brazil to try his luck in Europe. He settled in Lisbon and started a family there. This brilliantly edited, occasionally rapidly sequenced film shot on a Super8 is conceived as a "film-letter", to Nobert's parents, so that they can get a better idea of what his current life is like. This movie literally breathes with the joy of visual and editing experimentation, which is not only expressed through a virtually non-stop succession of footage from a restless camera embellished with excellent music, but also through many intimate and whimsical momen

Chicken Madness - How Europe's exports harm Africa

Director: Marcello Faraggi, Italy 2008, 28 min.

The film shows the consequences of EU agricultural subsidies and heavy exports to Africa and how they affect markets and peasants in Cameroon. It accompanies the project ‘Send no Chicken’ run by German NGOs. It’s available on DVD.

How to Get Ahead in Africa - How to Get Ahead in Africa

Director: Sorious Samura, United Kingdom 2006, 48 min.

This reportage filmed by Sorious Samura in Kenya and Ivory Coast reveals how serious the problem of corruption is in present–day Africa. Posing as a local citizen, the reporter uses a hidden camera to film the microcosm of urban slums and the daily encounters of ordinary Africans with bribery, an essential element of survival in their world. Palms are greased at public offices, at doctors' surgeries and in schools; in order to get a new job Samura himself is forced to pay bribes to both a security guard and to his superior. More serious is his discovery that it is very easy to set up a fictitious humanitarian organisation and by means of bribery draw thousands of pounds in international aid. The Sierra Leone–born director offers what is by European standards an unusually authentic picture of a dog–eat–dog society. He uncovers a web of daily corruption which impoverishes the lowest class of African society and undermines the continent's development.

Podul de flori (The Flower Bridge)

Director: Thomas Ciulei, Romania 2008,87 min.

A father lives with his son and two daughters on a farm in Moldova, which has no running water or automated machinery. They have to do all the work in the fields and garden, and also tend to their animals by themselves. They have to cope with housework as well, and the children somehow have to find time for the school they regularly attend over the hill. Their mother lives faraway in Italy, where she is earning money for the family. This poetic film about the everyday life of humble people with a very low standard of living, who experience feelings of happiness and sadness with temperance, portrays a world in which man is in harmony with nature. Nevertheless, the closeness between the family's individual members is stronger here than it is elsewhere, which helps partially compensate for the absence of their mother. This documentary has won several awards at international festival

Princesas

Director: Fernando León de Aranoa, Spain 2005, 113 min.

Caye and Zulema, two young prostitutes in Madrid, develop a friendship based on their desire for a better life. Initially they meet when Zulema, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, steals one of Caye's customers for a lower fee, but when she finds Zulema badly beaten in her apartment, they quickly learn to support each other. While Zulema is selling herself to support her young son back home, Caye hides her profession from her middle class family. Even in their grim circumstances, they sometimes pretend they are princesses to hold onto hope, even though they work in an industry where hope does not exist.

Sahara Chronicle

Director: Ursula Biemann, Switzerland 2006/2007, 50 min., in French with English subtitles

Five selected chapters of a video project on migration structures from West Africa to Europe via the Maghreb. In a non-linear narrative style the project shows not only the conditions of transport but also the infrastructure of security control, and the retention camps along the way. Interviews imply backgrounds of the emergence and development of these structures.

see: www.geobodies.org

Seeker

Directors: Omelihu Nwanguma, Adam Hutchings,United Kingdom 2004, 10 min.

An immigrant resorts to desperate measures while living in London, in a bid to convince his family back home that he is living the rich life they expect of h

Tout l'or du monde / End of the Rainbow

Director: Robert Nugent, Australia/France 2007, 84 min.

At first glance everything appears to be in order. A multinational mining company negotiates with the Guinean government before beginning to mine gold in the west African country, paying the original inhabitants compensation. Furthermore, as soon as the mine goes into operation the multinational provides work to poor local villagers. However, inevitable misunderstandings and conflict gradually arise between the community and the white gold–miners, with the investors calling on the army to quell the trouble. This tribal society, which has for years been dependent on small finds of gold, has barely any understanding of the rules of a globalised economy, let alone the opportunity it creates for carpetbagging. The villagers keep searching illicitly for the precious metal, ending up in jail if they are caught. When the mining company leaves with its gold bars what remains is a stripped landscape and greater poverty than before. The film is not concerned with political or ideological rhetoric; it is more a meditation on how traditional societies are finding it ever harder to resist developed modern civilisation.

Victimes de nos richesses (Victims of Our Riches)

Director: Kal Touré, France/ Mali 2008, 60 min.

Poverty is merely the result of a historical process, not the genetic status of Africans or some metaphysical condition we have been saddled with. With this statement begins an award-winning picture which examines African migration to Europe from a variety of angles. By contrast director Kal Touré, himself a Malian, keeps asking about ways of solving the desperate economic situation. He speaks to African intellectuals and European economists, participants in social forums, politicians and ordinary farmers. Along with the testimonies of returned migrants and intimate views of everyday life in Mali, this collage of opinion presents an interesting look at one of the most pressing problems of our age.