MARCH, 16
CINEMA THEATRE “BELARUS”
ENOUGH | The Empowered Women of Korogocho
Brent Foster (Canada-Kenya, 8 min)
Beatrice Nyariara lives in Korogocho. It’s widely considered to be Nairobi’s most dangerous slum.
More than 150,000 people are packed into the shanty town which is less than two square kilometers.
Crime is high. Gangs are active. Addiction is rampant.
A while back, men in her community started to attack the “grandmothers” of Korogocho at night. Most of the women attacked are sexually assaulted, and some have been killed. The men believe that the elder women were less likely to be HIV positive. They also saw them as vulnerable.
A few years ago, Beatrice decided enough was enough. It was time to fight back. It was time to develop a community.
The result of that decision empowered the group and taught their community to respect them, value them, and to know how to be there for them.
Together, they are taking back Korogocho.
RITA
George Danopoulos (Greece, 21 min)
Rita, an old-school prostitute, in Athens, talks about facts and aspects of her life and character.With her soft adorable voice she escorts an acute variety of images while wandering inside the whorehouses showing us the abrasive and strident world of the brothels in Athens.
IMPERMANENCE
Elliot Spencer (Australia, 7 min)
In a remote high-altitude village of Sichuan, Tibetan children intensively study Buddhist scripture. “Impermanence” explores the lives of nomadic Tibetan villagers and their close relationship to a harsh and beautiful environment.
MY THEATRE
Kazuya Ashizawa (Japan, 20 min)
The man closed the Cinema 55 years ago. Even so, people are coming. The man also put a fire on the projector today. “I will never let it go!”
THE LAST CORN DOG DINNER
Janelle Kung (USA, 4 min)
Through stop motion flashbacks, a mother and father recount a near-death experience with their son.
WINTER OF MY LIFE
Batteault Remy (France, 3 min)
Directed for the Straight 8 film contest, filmed in Super 8 without editing, this is the story of my father, a former butcher in Burgundy. Now a super 8 director. At 78, in the winter of his life, isn’t Super 8 take him back to springtime?
TRACKS
Annica Carlsson Bergdahl, Gunnar Bergdahl (Sweden, 14 min)
Every year about 80 people kill themselves in Sweden by standing on a rail track and wait for a train. Every single tragedy thus also take place in the train cab. How do drivers handle the experience of having death ever present at every shift, and behind every curve? Through a journey along the tracks that runs through the Swedish reality we get switched into a series of such reflective testimony, stories that is forming a chorus of voices while we travel along the inexorable tracks.