Movie - de vis wordt duur betaald

Remy Vlek, Netherlands, The, 2001

Producers synopsis

For the West African coast European fish vessels are more and more on the run for a big catch in the richest fish waters of the world. Giant floating fish factories are fishing big stocks of fish. The EC is supporting these activities with hundred millions of dollars. The very poor countries like Senegal and Mauritania are completely dependent on this EC money, to diminish their debts on the World Bank. The seas of Africa are overfished and the local population is not getting their share anymore.

We see in this film a portray of a big Dutch fishmultinational and their supertrawlers. We see also a portray of African fishermen. Their fate is that the fish stocks are getting rare while the population is at the same time more and more dependent on fish because of desertification of the local area. Also the so called Seals Nursery multinational from Pieterburen Holland plays a strange card in this story by stimulating the Dutch fisheries and not supporting the local African environment.

Movie - Paradise - Three Journeys in This World

Elina Hirvonen, Finland, 2007

Synopsis

The central figure in this film is 23-year-old Bakary from Mali, who left his family behind to build a better life in Europe. He found a job in a tomato nursery in Spain, but does not have a residence permit and therefore no right to housing. Along with some 20 partners in misfortune, he sleeps on the street.

The film consists of three parts; in the first, we meet Bakary in Spain. The second part is set in Rabat, Morocco, where many Africans dream of a trip to the European continent. Many try to cross the water, but most are caught by the police and get sent back. For example, the police left Adam behind in the Sahara Desert with 55 other people. He walked back to civilisation in 25 days, a trip that many of his companions did not survive.

The final episode is set in the village where Bakary was born and where his family resides, poorly but peacefully. These are shocking stories about the imagined paradise that many Africans believe Europe to be, stories that stand in sharp contrast to the great visual beauty of the film.

Movie - piece of mind

Netherlands, The, 2002

synopsis

PIECE OF MIND is a film about the field training of an international group of relief workers from Asia, Africa and Europe given by American psychologist Nancy Baron in the midst of a refugee camp in North Uganda. The participants, themselves victims of war and trauma, came from Tibet, Nepal, Algeria, Namibia, Burundi, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Cambodia, Sri Lank and The Netherlands.

Some are just housewives or social workers with little education while others are well-trained psychiatrists and psychotherapists. All are highly motivated to help, inspired by their own backgrounds and hope for the future. The film makes clear that motivation alone is not enough and that a higher formal education may indeed even hamper the worker’s efforts to help. Understanding of individual cultural beliefs on the part of both victims and helpers is essential in tackling the problems of people who have lost their homes, their families, their livelihoods and even their trust in life.

Movie - Emoticons

Heddy Honigmann, Netherlands, The, 2007

Synopsis

Saskia is fourteen years old. She is bullied a lot at school, which often makes her feel lonely. At home, she sits behind the computer for hours on end and plays violent video games, at which she is very good. Sanne relieves her sense of loneliness through writing and publishes her poems on the Internet.

Samantha was raped at the age of 15 and draws strength from advising other girls about love and sex on Internet forums. Debbie and Inge both lost their mothers to breast cancer. They met each other on the Net and have sent each other hundreds of emails. Zineb chats with her family in Algeria and with friends who understand what it is like to wait for the minister's decision about a residence permit, after having exhausted all possible legal procedures. For all of these girls, the Internet is a safe haven where they can be themselves, keep in touch with other people, and rebuild their confidence.

A virtual contact, which is often only a great deal later on followed by a 'real' meeting. Filmmaker Heddy Honigmann found these girls on the Net and made contact. Their conversations via the computer are interwoven with images of their daily lives, in which the computer plays a key role.

Invisible - Illegal in Europe

Andreas Voigt, Germany, 2004

Synopsis

Millions of people live illegally in Europe. Forced by circumstances, they lead a virtually invisible life. The German documentary maker Andreas Voigt decided to follow five such people for a year. Five stories of illegals, from different parts of the world, living in five European countries. Zakari, a deserted army officer, fled from Algeria, where his life is in danger.

He has been living illegally in Germany for ten years – his story was ‘not serious enough’ for a residence permit – and he still hopes one day to be able to return to a safe, democratic Algeria. Edita from Ecuador doesn’t even think about returning to her fatherland. The transsexual feels at home in Paris, where she gets a new temporary visa every three months. Malika, a Chechen, just wants a better future for her daughter. And Prince is awaiting his compulsory return to Nigeria in a Dutch cell. Oumar, finally, has just set foot on European soil – he reached the Spanish coast from Ceuta – when his dreams are shattered.

The border police are waiting for him. Without commenting or making any political analysis, INVISIBLE – ILLEGAL IN EUROPE sketches five portraits of people who keep hoping for happiness, but have to submit to their heart-rending fate.

Movie - a border of mirrors

Stefano Savona, Italy, 2002

Synopsis

Sicilian emigrants in Tunisia and Tunisian emigrants in Sicily, exchanges and flows that have generated interesting stories to tell. Stories of integration and hate between the races that are part of our one universe. Where the border between the Islamic world and the Western one is both evanescent and insurmountable. Stories told “from below”, that perfectly illustrate the concept of how globalization is both obsolete and unreachable. The daily life of a precarious life on the borderline. “We seem to have forgotten about Italian emigration to Tunisia, that began at the end of the 19th century and that continued with alternating intensity until 1960. As often happened in the case of Sicilian fishermen, this emigration resulted in double nuclear families of people with one family in Sicily and another one in Tunisia” (Stefano Savona).

Movie - clean and dream

A.C. van Zweeden, Netherlands, The, 2001

synopsis

This touching documentary chronicles the dreams of five cleaners who come from various parts of the globe. What do you dream about when you’re mopping floors surrounded by thousands of people who all assume that you’re there to clean up after them? All five cleaners work for the Asito Cleaning Company at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. Among the cleaners are Rosemary Obihara, an attractive, lively Nigerian woman who cleans toilets five mornings a week. After work she goes straight to her shop where she sells African clothes.

Abderrahim Haouas works full-time, he has studied Arabic language and literature in Morocco. He came to Holland hoping to do doctoral research. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out. For years, Mr. Harouas kept a diary from which he reads extracts. Fred Ntow has been a cleaner at Schiphol for ten years. He uses the money he earns to support his parents in Ghana. He has never told them that he’s a cleaner. He prefers to let them think he has a different job.

Movie - let it come down: the life of paul bowles

Jennifer Baichwal, Canada, 1998

synopsis

Paul Bowles, who has lived in Tangier, Morocco for over fifty years, is the quintessential iconoclast. He left the US for good in the 1940s after building an illustrious career as a composer, rejected the heroic identity requisite to expatriate American writers and buried himself in the culture of North Africa. A writer’s writer, his associations span the elite cultural circles of this century. His unorthodox marriage to writer Jane Bowles-both were gay and had significant relationships with others throughout their marriage-is legendary.

Together they formed the magnet which drew an extraordinary group of writers and artists to the exotic freedoms of Morocco before independence. In this definitive film biography, the notoriously laconic and reclusive Bowles finally speaks out on the subjects he has remained silent about over the years. Lying in bed at his home in Tangier and smoking kif with an elegant black cigarette holder, he reflects on his life, his work, Jane, love and his friends with unprecedented candour. Now 87 years old, his tone is almost omniscient, as though he is surveying both life and death from some lofty interim vantage point.

Movie - Life as a Corporate Holiday

Paolo Muran, Italy, 2006

Synopsis

Silvano Bignozzi and Lino Toselli have been working as salesmen of camomile tea and spirits for 30 years. They are both from Bologna, but travel all over the country to sell their goods. Not without success, because all these years they have always won the deluxe vacation the company bestows on its best salesmen. With the firm footing the bill, they have travelled to various remote corners of the globe: they went on a safari in Kenya, rode camels in Saudi Arabia and visited temples in Asia. This year, they are going to Cuba.

We meet the two gentlemen through the man who has been filming them on their excursions for the past 15 years. With a twinge of irony, he comments on the footage of 15 holidays in exotic places. The phenomenon of the company excursion turns out to be strikingly uniform, no matter how different the destination is.

We see how the group, which is almost exclusively male, invariably takes a bus tour on the first day, and can barely keep their eyes open the first evening as they watch a traditional show with song, dance and a lot of half-naked women. But this year, things are different, as Bignozzi and Toselli have decided to stay in Cuba longer - a whole week without travel guides and mandatory activities.

El Ejido, the Profit's Rule

Jawad Rhalib, Morocco, 2006

synopsis

Spain. Almeria, coastal province of renowned Andalusia and ancient desert that has become in 20 years the largest concentrated area in the world of culture under greenhouses. The artificial kitchen garden of Europe throughout the year. "Pateras", small unadapted boats spill out hundreds of immigrants on the Spanish coasts, all of them eager to gain Europe and better life conditions. What becomes of these immigrants and their dreams of an Eldorado? They end up in clandestinity and face a world nobody is prepared for.

They are trapped in their unbearable conditions of life and work made of disillusions, discouragement, anger and fear of not succeeding in their goal. Although home sick, their only path is to put up with the situation and not surrender. Keep their chin up and protect their pride for themselves and their family left behind. The film shows us their every day life of beasts of burden and points out the mechanism of an industrial system that exploits human beings and the environment.

Movie - Grossraum: Ceuta

Lonnie van Brummelen, Netherlands, The, 2004

Synopsis

Ceuta is a Spanish enclave on the northern tip of the African continent; a rocky peninsula on the Strait of Gibraltar. During the Franco regime, Ceuta was the only place free to trade with Spain. After the dictatorship, its economy collapsed. With a new marketplace next to the Moroccan border, the people of Ceuta try to stimulate trade with their neighbors. While the exportation of goods is encouraged, enhanced border patrol and a barbed-wire fence are preventing illegal migration. Ceuta is part of the film triptych Grossraum, which explores the composition of the landscape along the current margins of Europe.

The boundaries between Poland and Ukraine, between Spain and Morocco, and between the Greek-Cypriot and the Turkish-Cypriot parts of Cyprus are crossed by means of visual journeys. Divided landscapes are guarded by the military and photography is forbidden without the permission of the proper authorities. The film triptych is complemented with the publication of The Formal Trajectory, which expresses the often curious procedures and conflicting protocols that preceded filming.

Movie - continental tanger

Daniel Calderon, Switzerland, 2002

Synopsis

Door to the South or door to the North? Exposed to the open sea, at the junction of two continents, Tanger has a special cultural role to play. Europeans and Americans have captured it in their dreams of exoticism. The film recalls the never-ending artistic effervescence of Tanger with its various creative scenes. Around Morocco‘s oldest hotel, the Continental Tanger, we follow the footsteps of Bernardo Bertolucci, Orson Welles, Humprey Bogart, The Beat Poets, Paul Bowles, Jean Genet and also The Rolling Stones. Well-known local writers Mohamed Choukri and Souad Bahéchar bring us closer to the secret of their hometown. The important musical influence of the traditional gnawas upon American jazz is retold by Randy Weston. Of its mythical past, the white city has kept a strong tradition of openness and tolerance.

Movie - Faya!

Mirjam Marks, Netherlands, The, Surinam, 2005

Synopsis

All over the world, children use music and dance to express their feelings: in Suriname, Burundi, Morocco, Somalia and the Netherlands. They play, learn, develop their talents and gain self-confidence. And whether they live in a project in the inner city or a row house somewhere in the provinces, what's bred in the bone will come out in the flesh. In a tidy, typically Dutch backyard, girls practise Bollywood dances; against a background of palm trees and dilapidated houses, Surinamese teenagers perform a self-composed song, a thirteen-year-old rapping "When I make music, I feel better."

Movie - Overbooked

Stefano Strocchi, Italy, 2007

synopsis

Sergio, a middle-aged Italian and Youssef from Morocco work in a tiny office in Turin managing the weekly bus to the Magreb. Originally just a smart business idea, the agency is now something more than that. An odd pair in the middle of a changing world, Overbooked takes us into the chaotic, funny and sometimes tragic moments of the agency.

Movie - sacred sounds

Carmine Cervi, Morocco, 2000

synopsis

SACRED SOUNDS explores the idea of 'sacred' music and its use as a communication with and celebration of God, a practice shared by almost every culture and faith in the world. Through dynamic musical performances and interviews with artists and religious figures, SACRED SOUNS brings us to an understanding of faith through music.

More than a dozen artists from Islamic, Christian, and Jewish traditions appear, including Noa, a renowned Israeli singer bringing her message of the Middle East peace to the Arab world; Avay-e-Douste, an Iranian female quartet improvising songs in the Radif system; the Aissawas, a religious brotherhood performing Sufi ceremonial music famous for its trance-inducing ability; and Liz McComb, an American gospel singer who transmits her passion in performances of intensity and emotion.

SACRED SOUNDS takes place against the exotic backdrop of Fez, a millennium-old city of twisting alleys and covered bazaars, bright-tile mosques and crumbling palaces. Busy souks, bundle-laden donkeys, and the call to prayer that flows from the city's pervasive loud speakers contribute to a sensual, mystical experience in Morocco's centre.

Movie - Tarifa Traffic - Death in the Straits of Gibraltar

Joakim Demmer, Germany, Switzerland, 2003

Synopsis

Tarifa, located on the southern-most tip of Spain. is known as a surfer’s paradise. Across the sea, only twenty kilometres away, the Moroccan coast is visible. To the sun-bleached surfers, Tarifa is an idyllic holiday spot, but a Red Cross employee is reluctant to set foot on the beach. He knows what comes across the waters by night and by dawn: numb, hypothermic, African refugees, or even a sadder sight: the bodies of the drowned souls who do not make it.

We see one boat approach, terribly overloaded and rolling frightfully in the sea. Sharp cliffs along the coast break many boats apart. Most of the refugees cannot swim; they will not reach the mainland alive. And if they do, they run the serious risk of getting caught. By now, depending on the weather, the relief workers and police officers know how things will go: Tonight, they will try again. So, they methodically patrol the area.

Another harrowing image of a cemetery full of numbered graves: the identities of many of the dead cannot be retrieved. The filmmaker tells the story of the doomed, but indirectly poses the question of guilt: to what extent is Europe responsible for this?

Movie - Met een zoen van de leraar

Barbara den Uyl, Netherlands, The, 1994

For one year, filmmaker Barbara den Uyl returned to the Mondriaan grammar school, a secondary school in Amsterdam West where she had worked as a teacher twenty years ago. At that time the school population consisted largely of white students; today, it is for 90% made up of immigrant students. In all, the school numbers 45 nationalities, the vast majority of which is Turkish or Moroccan.

Den Uyl sees her film as an examination of the everyday practice of the multi-cultural society. The daily school problems, as well as culturally instigated conflicts are presented. The film is made up of two parts. In the first part a second grade 'HAVO' (higher general secondary education) class, the group that performs worst, is followed. The principal person is a teacher and co-ordinator who tries to solve communication breakdowns and problems individually. The second part follows the older students.

Here, the film focusses on a Moroccan girl who leaves school to get engaged in Morocco, but reports to school again some time later. This film will also participate in the Global Motion programme.

Movie - I see the stars at noon

Saeed Taji Farouky, England, Morocco, 2005

synopsis

In January 2004, in the northern Moroccan city of Tangiers, first-time documentary filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky met a Moroccan named Abdelfattah. He was a clandestine, one of many Africans who try to cross the narrow Straits of Gibraltar and illegally enter Spain by stowing away on cargo ships or boarding inflatable rafts.

Taji Farouky offers a unique and revealing insight into Abdelfattah’s desperate attempt to reach Europe. At times humorous and disturbing, it intimately examines the circumstances that lead him to risk everything for an utterly uncertain future. But I see the stars at noon is also an exploration of the nature of documentary filmmaking and objectivity.

The traditional relationship between filmmaker and subject is thrown into question when Abdelfattah asks why his life is being filmed for the benefit of European audiences, and what he deserves in return. By addressing such issues head-on, Taji Farouky stands out as a highly original and deeply personal look at the dilemma of illegal immigrants.

Movie - Ours Is the Labour

Jeroen van Bergeijk, Netherlands, The, 2007

Synopsis

"For us the work, from God the blessing" was the motto written on the wall of the Hooijmeijer Dutch rusk factory in Barendrecht. In the 1960s and 1970s, the factory that adhered to the Dutch Reformed Church was doing very well. So well, in fact, that it was hard to find enough labourers who were willing to commit to the tough physical work of making dough and baking rusk, the crisp bread that is a staple of the Dutch breakfast.

For this reason, the company enlisted the first foreign workers from Morocco. They were all strong young men. They were placed in communal housing, working long hours to earn some extra money to provide a better future for their children. The foreigners were welcomed with open arms, and little was said at that time about integration or cultural assimilation. Filmmaker Jeroen van Bergeijk is the son of the factory manager.

While the camera wanders around the abandoned buildings, we hear the former employees in voice-over, including both Moroccans and Dutchmen. They reminiscence about those first years of foreign labour in the Netherlands, when Moroccans hardly spoke a word of Dutch, but were still treated respectfully by their native Dutch colleagues. Their stories are colourfully illustrated by archive footage.

Movie - the endless caravan

Ariane Mertens, Morocco, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, The, 2004

synopsis

Every summer, more than one million Moroccan economic migrants who live and work in western Europe set off by car to visit their homeland. A straight 36-hour drive brings their battered and overloaded vehicles to long queues at Spain's southern ports. After an average ten-hour wait at the border, they are let onto a ferry for the short trip to Tangier and further into Morocco.

THE ENDLESS CARAVAN is a documentary road-movie which follows two young second-generation Moroccans from the West as they undertake this intensive trip with their families. Underneath the surface of our traveling protagonists lingers a deep-rooted identity crisis which confronts them every day of their lives. Both born and raised in Belgium, they face this struggle in different ways. For Ouasima (22) of Antwerp and Billal (19) of Brussels, the annual trip is a metaphor for their double-life with one foot in the West, and another in Morocco. Never before have we been able to be so close to the everyday challenges within Moroccan family life.