8/11 (sat) 16:00 ~ Sangyo-Shinko Bldg 3F,
8/12 (mon) 21:00 ~ Uno Port Pier#2 Trailer Theater
Spoils
Dir. Alex Mallis, USA, 2012, 21min. documentary
Spoils: Extraordinary Harvest (trailer) from Alex Mallis on Vimeo.
Synopsis one-line:
Intimate portraits of 3 New Yorkers on a journey through the culture of dumpster diving, a practice as old as agriculture.
Synopsis short:
An aging Brooklyn artist, his young assistant, and blind friend arrive by rusted retro car; a Puerto Rican woman and her teenage grandson arrive on foot, lead by a rattling grocery cart; a hyperactive twenty-something and his stoned companion leave a Bushwick loft to navigate the subway. Familiar faces and converging philosophies meet to take what others deem unworthy of consumption. Three New Yorkers embark on an intimate journey through the culture of dumpster diving, illuminating a practice as old as agriculture.
Bio: Alex lives in Brooklyn, NY. His films have screened at IFF Boston, Hot Docs, DOCNYC, UnionDocs, and on The Documentary Channel and BBC News. He recently completed THE LAST COLORFUL NOTE, an exploration of childhood notes, and RIGHT HERE ALL OVER, a widely viewed and shared short documentary exploring the community and culture of Occupy Wall Street. His collaborative short, MATTHEW 24:14, won Best Film and Best Directing at the 2011 International Doc Challenge at Hot Docs. Alex is an avid photographer and greatly enjoys the darkroom. He is an MFA candidate for Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College (CUNY) and an active member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective and the Meerkat Media Collective. Film Website: http://www.analectfilms.com/spoils/
Artist Statement:
I heard about dumpster diving from a friend and was immediately attracted to the prospect of gathering free food in such an exciting way. After participating for about 2 years, I decided to bring a camera along. I sought not to create a traditional activist film centered around industry experts and statistics, but rather let the story tell itself, through observation and an air of mystery.
One Eye Open 2010
Dir. ikon (eye-Kon), Egypt/Japan, 2010, 17’23”, experimental
“Being Japanese-Egyptian has enriched many aspects of my life, but at times, this can also be disconcerting. Living mostly in Egypt with brief stays in Japan, I needed to discover the other side of my identity. 
However I was always busy with life obligations. Finally, I promised myself to go to Japan to explore this unbeaten path. For a year, I have been to many cities, towns and places exploring this world I belonged to yet knew vaguely. I have documented some of my experience and wanted to express it through this short film. Without a script, a plan or a crew, I took the challenge of reflecting the journey and making the film myself from A to Z.”
Bio:
Visual Artist + Filmmaker. Born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt. A multidisciplinary visual artist and filmmaker mainly focusing on issues of identity, personal expression and experimenting with different elements and forms. Working with current affairs, futuristic projects and art development collaboratively and individually.
Everyday Life of Roma Children from Block 71
Dir: Ivana Todorovic, Serbia, 2006, 21min. documentary
The term “Gypsy” brings the images of a traveling tribe with colorful costumes and exotic music. They are said to be the roots of Spain’s Flamenco, Turkey’s Belly dance, and Balkan’s brass music. The lead of the popular Opera, “Carmen,” is a gypsy. Gypsies have had special appearances in the novels of European literature and art giants such as Goethe, Tolstoy, Picasso or Gogh. Musicians like Liszt, Brahms, or Sarasate all took an inspiration from Gypsy culture. However, just like Mayans in Latin and Central Americas, the living Gypsies of today have been left uncared in the shadows of the historical, exotic images of Gypsies.
The Roma people featured in this documentary are the main tribe among the so-called Gypsies. They live mainly in Central to Eastern Europe. The term “Gypsy” means “people from Egypt” but today they are believed to have come from Northern India. According to EU census, there are 10~12 million Romas in Europe, among which Rumania has the largest Roma population.
In spite of their rather high status in the art world as an artistic, exotic people, their real history of Roma and Gypsies illuminates suffering tribes through ages. They were a target of Hitler’s ethnic cleansing policy in the 1930-40s along with Jews [MU1] (although Romani or Roma people are Aryans). After WWII, some of the Socialist countries recognized the Roma people as a minority group and encouraged them to settle in one place and assimilate with other residents. However, they suffered discriminations from both Serbians and Albanians during the Kosovo Conflict in 1999. Many were again uprooted and have become refugees since. These are some of the background stories of the children in this film.
There are about 600 squatter areas in Serbia and they are mostly occupied by Roma people. In this film, a Serb female director visits one of those areas alone and captures images of children from one Roma family. “Would you like to go to school?” “What are your dreams?” With peculiar curiosity and deadly eye-level views, she exists among the subjects while shooting. This charming and journalistic yet intimate portrait of Roma children is an early work of Ivana Todorovic, the documentary world’s new rising star that UPAF has kept its eye on since its foundation in 2010. This film has been awarded and screened at 30+ European and North American film festivals, and was selected as part of a curriculum for primary school education in Serbia as part of a civil education course in 2011.
—-
Director Bio:
Ivana Todorovic graduated from Belgrade University with a diploma in Anthropology. Her graduate thesis was her first documentary, Everyday Life of Roma Children from Block 71. At Ateliers Varan Paris, a summer workshop in Belgrade, she made her second film, Adem’s Island.
In 2007, after studying at the New Policy School, an NGO Youth Initiative for Human Rights in Belgrade, Ivana went on to make the short documentary, Rapresent, about a 19-year-old homeless graffiti artist, which premiered at the London International Film Festival, LIDF, and received the Best National Award in the XVIII International Festival of Ethnological Film in Belgrade, Serbia. The film has screened in numerous festivals including the 2010 Rotterdam Film Festival. The film’s subject, Bojan, overdosed on heroin in June 2009; Rapresent may be seen here.[MU2]
In 2008, Ivana enrolled in the Documentary Media Studies program at the New School in New York and made A Harlem Mother, a documentary about broken family relationships due to youth gun violence in Harlem. The film, which had its premiere in October 2009 at the Maysles Cinema, tells “the heart-wrenching story of Jean Corbett-Parker whose love for her son LaTraun, tragically shot, lives on through her work with Harlem Mothers.” Weaving footage from LaTraun’s own film with scenes from Jean’s new life today, A Harlem Mother is a short documentary that tells this tragic and inspirational story from the dual perspectives of mother and son. The documentary is currently in the festival circuit and recently screened at the 2010 Festival de Cannes – Short Film Corner. It has won awards in the “Videnie” Documentary Film Festival in Russia, Mixed Messages Film Festival in New York and the Carolina Film and Video Festival. Ivana has returned to Belgrade and made “Makis City” (2011), a portrait of an area where the former factory workers remained even after the closing of the factory, and live without running water or adequate streetlights despite its proximity to the central Belgrade. She is now finishing a new film on a transgender prostitute in Belgrade.
Reiko (UPAF)’s interview article w/ Ivana (in Japanese): http://www.webdice.jp/dice/detail/2452/
—–
Film Festivals, Screenings, Awards
Golden Wheel, Fourth Roma Film Festival, Skopje, Macedonia, 2006
Gottingen International Film Festival, Gottingen, Germany, 2006
OFFAF, 19th International Film Festival, Skopje, Macedonia, 2006
Viscult Film Festival, International Festival of Visual Culture, Joensuu, Finland, 2006
International Film Festival of Ethnological Film, Belgrade, Serbia, 2006
Tartu Festival of Visual Culture, Tartu, Estonia, 2006
A Conversation in Film – International Documentary Film Festival, London, England, 2006
“Eyes and Lenses IV” International Ethnographic Film Festival, Warsaw, Poland, 2006
54th Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival, Serbia, 2006
International Documentary Film Festival, Volda, Norway, 2006
Balkan International Film Festival, Warsaw, Poland, 2006
Special Jury Award, International Film Festival of Ethnological Film, Belgrade, 2006
Third Prize, OFFAF, 19th International Film Festival, Skopje, Macedonia, 2006
CRONOGRAF, International Documentary Film Festival, Moldova, 2007
Terra Di Tutti, International Documentary Film Festival, Bologna, Italy, 2007
DOCUPOLIS, International Documentary Film Festival, Barcelona, Spain, 2007
Montreal Human Rights Film Festival, Canada, 2007
Best Short Film, Human Rights Film Festival, Montreal, Canada, 2007
Royal Anthropological Institute International Festival of Ethnographic Film, UK, 2007
London International Documentary Film Festival, 2007
New York Gypsy Film Festival, 2007
Quebec International Ethnographic Film Festival, Canada, 2008
Gypsy Film Festival, Milan, Italy, 2008
IV Moscow International Visual Anthropology Film Festival, Russia, 2008
European Association of Social Anthropologists’ Film, Video & New Media Festival, Slovenia, 2008
Platforma Video Festival, Athens, Greece, 2008
Days of Ethnographic Film, Rovinj, Croatia, 2009
Uno Port Art Films, Japan, 2010
Consensus
Dir: Meerkat Media Collective, USA, 2011, 8’26”, documentary
From Meerkat’s website: “A look into the “HOW” of the Occupy Wall Street movement: The consensus process. The community of occupiers at Liberty Plaza have sparked the process of building a movement that now transcends any one physical landmark. The tools to keep the movement alive belong to all of us. Created by the Meerkat Media Collective. For the last 6 years we’ve been using consensus decision making in our filmmaking process.”
Background of the Meerkat Media Collective can be found on the page for their feature film “Brasslands”.
Mira
Dir. Craig Scheihing, USA (Philadelphia), 4’00”, 2011, experimental film
In place of a Synopsis…
UPAF asked Craig to write a synopsis of Mira, and this was what he sent back. He creates films to express something that words cannot. So what he “wrote” in place of a synopsis became another piece of art. But since it was so gentle and transient just like Mira, UPAF will post it here as is.
Sehnsucht
Dir. Craig Scheihing, USA, 2011, 1’00”, experimental
Sehnsucht is a difficult word to define. Described by C.S. Lewis as an “inconsolable longing” in the human heart for “we know not what,” sehnsucht is one of those words that seeks to express an emotion which, while experienced so strongly that it seems to demand expression, reveals the shortcomings of language in human communication. It is a word that acknowledges the limitations of words and the depth of human feeling.
From Czeslaw Milosz’s Unattainable Earth : “When one does not force himself to express the inexpressible, nothing is lost and the inexpressible is contained inexpressibly in that which is expressed.” – L. Wittgenstein
Craig Scheihing Bio
Craig Scheihing is an experimental filmmaker and photographer based in Philadelphia. While the focus of his work is wide-ranging, he strives to create works that require active viewership by his audience, necessitating that the meaning derived from the work is not spelled out for the viewer, but rather that it is created by how the individual relates to and connects with it. In addition to his solo projects, he has collaborated with Hammarhead Industries and is a founding member of the Girard Hall Collective. His work on the independent arts journal ‘Unframed’ was hosted by Megawords in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and his films have been screened in both the United States and Internationally.
Website: http://www.craigscheihing.com/
Blog: www.craigscheihing.tumblr.com
We’d like to send our heartfelt thanks to Mr. Alex Mallis, Mr. Ikon, Ms. Ivana Todorovic, the Meerkat Media Collective, and Mr. Craig Scheihing to make their wonderful films available to UPAF. Thank you!