Documentaries

As a young man, American Louis Sarno heard a song on the radio that gripped his imagination. He followed the mysterious sounds all the way to the Central African rainforest and found their source with the Bayaka Pygmies, a tribe of hunters and gatherers. He never left.

Today, twenty-five years later, Louis Sarno has recorded more than 1,000 hours of unique Bayaka music. He is a fully accepted member of the Bayaka society and has a 13-year-old son, Samedi. Once, when Samedi was a baby, he became seriously ill and Louis feared for his life. He held his son in his arms through a frightful night and made him a promise: “If you get through this, one day I’ll show you the world I come from.”

Now the time has come to fulfill his promise, and Louis travels with Samedi from the African rainforest to another jungle, one of concrete, glass, and asphalt: New York City. Together, they meet Louis’ family and old friends, including his closest friend from college, Jim Jarmusch.

Carried by the contrasts between rainforest and urban America, with a fascinating soundtrack and peaceful, loving imagery, Louis‘ and Samedi‘s stories are interwoven to form a touching portrait of an extraordinary man and his son. Song From the Forest is a modern epic set between rainforest and skyscrapers.

One night, when Brussels film maker Bernard Crutzen is driving home on his bike, he comes face to face with a fox. It is looking at him brutally as if to say "and you, what are you doing here in Brussels? Is this your kind of city?" The same question goes for the peregrine falcons, the toads in the fountains, the rattle snakes and the beetles in the capital. This film researches this co-existence between man and (wild) animal and asks at what distance we want to or should live from each other.

A movie by Bernard Crutzen

Over half the world now lives in cities. Filmmaker David Bond grew up in the countryside but now lives in the big city and he loves it. He is knee-deep in the digital world, constantly checking his Blackberry, consuming media 24/7. He has beaten nature. But following a rare trip to the countryside he was horrified to noticed a change in his and his children's behaviour. They stopped worrying - about emails, about what they were wearing and when their favourite TV show was on - and began to enjoy their natural surroundings. What has city living done to his family? Is the countryside really a better place for them to grow up happy? His carefree childhood was very different from theirs.

David enlists his family - his wife Katie and children Ivy (4) and Albie (2) along with his mother, Helen. They agree to test the effect that their life, separated from nature, is having on them. Helen has recently moved from remote North Yorkshire to live with them in London. She is about to turn 80 and has seen a massive change in children's lives since her own childhood. How has her behaviour changed since moving to the city? How will David's children's behaviour change, as he and Katie understand better the scientific arguments for and against nature in childhood? David is turning 40. His family represents three generations - and their changing relationship to nature.

David investigates the scientific basis for the changes in his family's behaviour. Project Wild Thing is a road trip, finding hilarity, joy and absurdity in the choices we face as 21st Century humans: What happens when we forget we are natural animals? Should we buy into the convenience of digital life, or should we believe in the power of nature? Is this a choice we have to make at all? Can we find a way to get the best of both?

feel my love is a compelling observation of human existence and paints an intimate portrait of life and growing old with dementia. For an entire year, the documentary follows the people who live together in Huis Perrekes (Oosterlo, Belgium) as they go about their daily lives and rituals, supported by each other and by their loved ones. Using music as a motif, this consciously light-hearted film looks at what is still there, not at what has been lost. feel my love is about love, letting go, wonder  and the human desire to be there until the very end. 

A film by Griet Teck 

The American West. We have arrived in a world where human life would seem to be impossible: an arid, mythical landscape characterized by absence. Absence of water, trees, life. In the beginning there was nothing. But then traces start appearing.
Desert Haze tells the many-layered story of human presence in the American Desert. The traces of the past are like geological strata in the desert. The film becomes a mosaic of various stories, merging in a peculiar chronicle of America at the crossroads of present and past, myth and reality.
From astronauts preparing for future missions to Mars to Japanese country singers, archeologists hunting for the remnants of military test airplanes, the mysterious death of John Wayne...

"The Best of DOCVILLE" contains a selection of incredible documentaries were featured on DOCVILLE this year. 7 international hits, among which several have been awarded on DOCVILLE.

"NE ME QUITTE PAS" 

‘Ne me quittepas’ is a tragicomic ode to failure. Set in a village on the edge of Belgium, Bob (Flemish) and Marcel (Walloon) share their solitude, sense of humor and craving for alcohol. They have agreed that suicide is the best way out if worse comes to worst. In that case, they have chosen the perfect spot to do so: under Bob’s tree of life. Bob is a retired cowboy who loves his freedom and the forest, while Marcel is trying to hold on to the family he is about to lose. Time passes slowly in the Wallonian countryside. Fortunately, there’s wood to be chopped, sticky flypaper to be hung and there are the occasional trips to the dentist. The remaining time is killed with drinking. In direct cinema style we witness a Walloon carnival, a car accident and a failed attempt to find Bob’s son. Even Bob’s tree of life appears to have vanished. Despite all, the two men never indulge in self-pity. They stand strong together, until Marcel decides to stop drinking and Bob refuses to join him in rehab. 

‘Ne me quitte pas’ is a Belgian drama about life on the brink of society in all its beauty, modesty and irony. The authenticity of the main characters is painful and confronting, yet entertaining and utterly charming. It is a story about mortality in a place where time seems to stand still.

"EXPEDITION TO THE END OF THE WORLD" 

A grand, adventurous journey to the last uncharted areas of the globe. Yet no matter how far we go, and how hard we try to find the answer, the ultimate meeting is with ourselves and our own transience. A real adventure film – for the 21st century. On a three-mast schooner packed with artists, scientists and ambitions worthy of Noah or Columbus, we set off for the end of the world: the rapidly melting massifs of North-East Greenland. An epic journey where the brave sailors on board encounter polar bear nightmares, Stone Age playgrounds and entirely new species. But in their encounter with new, unknown parts of the world, the crew of scientist and artists also confronted the existential questions of life. Curiosity, grand pathos and a liberating dose of humour come together in a superbly orchestrated film where one iconic image after the other seduces us far beyond the historical footnote that is humanity. A film conceived and brought to life on a grand scale  - a long forgotten childhood dream lived out by grown artists and scientists.

"THE AMBASSADOR" 

"This conversation we're about to have never happened," says a dealer of diplomatic passports in the opening sequence of The Ambassador. It is a statement that sets the tone for a substantial part of this secretly shot film, and also proves the value of the method. The Ambassador reveals the dark side of Africa, an underworld that cannot be recorded in any other way. Mads Brügger is a Danish journalist and master satirist who won the 2010 Sundance World Cinema Documentary Award for The Red Chapel, in which he manages to get a Danish-Korean acting duo into North Korea for a performance. This time, dressed as a neo-colonialist, he sets off for the Central African Republic to impersonate the Liberian consul. He sets up a match factory run by pygmies as a cover for his ambitions in diamond trafficking. But Brügger is really there to show how the power in the country is allotted and traded. This mission is most definitely not without its dangers, as borne out by the murder of the chief of the security service, a former foreign legionnaire, some time after the two meet. Winner of the "Weten & Geweten Award" on DOCVILLE.

"VERGEET ME NIET"

David Sieveking portrays the domestic care of his mother Gretel, who, like millions of others, is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. David’s parents were active in the student movement of the 1960s and led an „open relationship“, which is now being tested in a dramatic way through the mother’s illness. The changes taking place within the mother forces the family to deal with its own conflicts and even teaches them new ways to express their feelings and experience intimacy, bringing them all closer together. With humor and candor, David Sieveking’s family chronicle is characterized by unaffected participation and loving affection, where it is the human being at the center of the story, not the illness.

"HAPPY"

What makes us happy? Family? Children? Is being happy a matter of coincidence? Is you chance of being happy genetically determined? Or can you make your own happiness? Is baing happy a mood or is it a skill that can be learned? Director Roko Belic is looking for answers to these pressing questions. He takes us from the beaches of Brasil to little villages in Okinawa, from the swamps of Louisiana to the Namibian desert. Because the search for hapiness is universal, that much is clear. "Happy" combines scientific research with inspiring examples from daily life and fascinating stories from all over the world and offers enlightening insights about the most valluable human emotion.

"MARWENCOL"

On April 8, 2000, Mark Hogancamp was attacked by five men and left for dead outside of a bar in Kingston, NY. After nine days in a coma, he awoke to find he had no memory of his previous adult life. He had to relearn how to eat, walk and write.When his state-sponsored rehabilitative therapies ran out, Mark took his recovery into his own hands. In his backyard, he created a new world entirely within his control - a 1:6 scale World War II town he named Marwencol. Using doll alter egos of his friends and family, his attackers and himself, Mark enacted epic battles and recreated memories, which he captured in strikingly realistic photographs. Those photos eventually caught the eye of the art world, which lead to a series of gallery exhibitions, the award-winning documentary "Marwencol," the acclaimed book "Welcome to Marwencol," and a new identity for a man once ridiculed for playing with dolls. The film won the 2010 Jury prize on DOCVILLE.

"PROJECT NIM"

From the Academy Award winning team behind Man on Wire, producer Simon Chinn and director James Marsh, comes the story of Nim, the chimpanzee who in the 1970s became the focus of a landmark experiment which aimed to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child. Following Nim's extraordinary journey through human society, and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way, the film is an unflinching and unsentimental biography of an animal we tried to make human. What we learn about his true nature - and indeed our own - is comic, revealing and profoundly unsettling.

Jean-Pierre Junior Bauwens, 23 years old and world champion in the lightweight junior category of boxing is a boy of few words who comes from a very special family. He is the oldest of 7 siblings, four of whom suffer from autism. He doesn’t just fight to win titles; he is fighting for a better future for his family. Boxing could be his ticket to buying them all a bigger house.  But then tragedy strikes. This film shows the tough clash between a loving family and cold reality.

Honourable Mention of the Jury, DOCVILLE, 2012
Best Action/Sport, Flagstaff Mountain Film Festival, 2013 
Winner Best International Short, Documentary Edge Festival, 2014

"This stunning documentary, reminiscent of Ken Loach’s social realist style, is a welcomed reminder of the power of documentary to capture real life stories in a raw and unmediated way." - Hot Docs

Mentally challenged criminals can not be held responsible for their actions. They do not belong in jail, but it is where they often end up, in the absence of an alternative. Without treatment and without perspective, their release date is December 31ste of the year 9999. Time loses all meaning here. “9999” takes you to a forgotten part of Belgium and looks some internees, languishing in the prison of Merksplas, straight in the eyes. A candid, intimate and often poignant portrait of people whose lives are stationary in time.

Special Mention, Visions du Réel, 2014

Calvin & Hobbes dominated the Sunday comics in thousands of newspapers for over 10 years, having a profound effect on millions of readers across the globe.  When the strip’s creator, Bill Watterson, retired the strip on New Year’s Eve in 1995, devoted readers everywhere felt the void left by the departure of Calvin, Hobbes, and Watterson’s other cast of characters, and many fans would never find a satisfactory replacement.

It has now been more than a decade since the end of the Calvin & Hobbes era.  Bill Watterson has kept an extremely low profile during this time, living a very private life outside of Cleveland, Ohio.  Despite his quiet lifestyle, Mr. Watterson is remembered and appreciated daily by fans who still enjoy his amazing collection of work.

Mr. Watterson has inspired and influenced millions of people through Calvin & Hobbes.  Newspaper readership and book sales can be tracked and recorded, but the human impact he has had and the value of his art are perhaps impossible to measure.

This film is not a quest to find Bill Watterson, or to invade his privacy.  It is an exploration to discover why his 'simple' comic strip made such an impact on so many readers in the 80s and 90s, and why it still means so much to us today.

PRESS
"This affectionate doc includes some insightful points about the declining state of comic strips." (The Hollywood Reporter) 

“The film offers not only an in-depth look at the comic strip's unique influence but also a concise snapshot of the dwindling state of newspapers and their "funny pages."” (L.A. Times)

"Schroeder tracks the end of innocence in much the same way that the strip captured it each time out (..) he hardly makes a spectacle out of Watterson's secluded tendencies. The pileup of interview subjects speak eloquently on his behalf.” (indieWIRE)

A large three-master filled with artists, scientists and a sense of adventure sets off for the end of the world. Or in this case the quickly melting ice-covered world of Greenland. It ends up being an epic journey full of experiences, nightmares about polar bears and the discovery of entirely new species. But the most unexpected encounter of the adventure on this breathtaking journey are their own questions about life itself. An excursion full of curiosity, big feelings, magnificent landscapes and of course, a sense of humor.

Every Friday the inhabitants of Nabib Saleh, a village in Palestine, put on a protest march, which is then invariably torn apart by rubber bullets and tear gas. The official provocation for the protest dates back to 2009, when the local water source was occupied by the Israeli colony of Halamish, but the underlying reason is obviously the illegal construction of Israeli settlements. A few hundred meters down the road, people are preparing for sjabbat, the weekly day of rest. The contrast between both worlds results in a painfully tangible picture of this protracted conflict.

EXTRA:
THE TASTE OF FREEDOM
Jan Beddegenoodts / Belgium / 45 min / 2012 / D: English, Arabic / ST: English
For eight months Jan Beddegenoodts combined dance raves in Israel with protests in the Palestinian territories.

REVIEW:
“Thank God it’s Friday is a touching portrait of one of the hotspots in the Westbank. You will never get as close to the main obstacle to the Palestinian-Israeli contemporary peace process.” - Ludo Abicht

The American Redwood Forest is a closed world that speaks to the imagination. It is made up of huge sequoias and houses several communities. A veil of high trees protects the forest and its inhabitants from the outside world. There are no Walmarts or Starbucks to be seen, the landscape is made up of small towns, tall trees and a thick fog. But urbanification threatens to disturb the peace. A musing look at a unique biotope threatening to be destroyed by the advance of the outside world.

a documentary film by Ibbe Daniëls and Koen Vidal, in coproduction with VRT-Canvas and Casa Kafka Pictures, Supported by the Flanders Audiovisual Fund, the Belgian Development Cooperation, le centre du Cinéma de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles et de VOO.

Serge Kakudji is a twenty-year-old Congolese opera singer, fighting for his ambitions in Western Europe. Kakudji is the first African to sing arias in the predominately white world of opera music.
That alone makes him unique. Still, he seems to hold his own in our harsh and lonesome reality. Moreso, as the first African ever he stands on the verge of a tremendous international career in opera music. This film tells the story of a man bridging the gap between Europe and Africa.

"This conversation we're about to have never happened," says a dealer of diplomatic passports in the opening sequence of The Ambassador. It is a statement that sets the tone for a substantial part of this secretly shot film, and also proves the value of the method. The Ambassador reveals the dark side of Africa, an underworld that cannot be recorded in any other way. Mads Brügger is a Danish journalist and master satirist who won the 2010 Sundance World Cinema Documentary Award for The Red Chapel, in which he manages to get a Danish-Korean acting duo into North Korea for a performance. This time, dressed as a neo-colonialist, he sets off for the Central African Republic to impersonate the Liberian consul. He sets up a match factory run by pygmies as a cover for his ambitions in diamond trafficking. But Brügger is really there to show how the power in the country is allotted and traded. This mission is most definitely not without its dangers, as borne out by the murder of the chief of the security service, a former foreign legionnaire, some time after the two meet. Winner of the "Weten & Geweten Award" on DOCVILLE.

David Sieveking portrays the domestic care of his mother Gretel, who, like millions of others, is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. David’s parents were active in the student movement of the 1960s and led an „open relationship“, which is now being tested in a dramatic way through the mother’s illness. The changes taking place within the mother forces the family to deal with its own conflicts and even teaches them new ways to express their feelings and experience intimacy, bringing them all closer together. With humor and candor, David Sieveking’s family chronicle is characterized by unaffected participation and loving affection, where it is the human being at the center of the story, not the illness.

Does money make you HAPPY? Kids and family? Your work? Do you live in a world that values and promotes happiness and well-being? Are we in the midst of a happiness revolution?

Roko Belic, director of the Academy Award® nominated “Genghis Blues” now brings us HAPPY, a film that sets out to answer these questions and more. Taking us from the bayous of Louisiana to the deserts of Namibia, from the beaches of Brazil to the villages of Okinawa, HAPPY explores the secrets behind our most valued emotion.

This DVD has only Dutch subtitles!