What is the value of amateur cinema? How should we watch amateur films? What is special about this or that movie? This year’s Docudays UA special interactive online programme ‘Film Troubadours: Scotland and Ukraine’ is dedicated to the amateur cinema of two countries: Scotland, where ‘unofficial‘ films have become an important cultural phenomenon, and Ukraine, where research interest in vernacular cinema has grown over the past few years.
The programme will be available for viewing by the festival audience on a free basis, without geographical restrictions. During the festival week from 27 March to 4 April, new movies from the Scottish and Ukrainian selections will appear daily on docuspace.org each of the movies will be available for 48 hours.
Film Troubadours: Scotland and Ukraine’ programme includes:
- The Tweed, dir. J. Gray (Scotland — United Kingdom)
- The Coming of the ‘Camerons’, dir. Frank M. Marshall (Scotland — United Kingdom)
- Trawler Town, dir. Ronald Miller (Scotland — United Kingdom)
- Build Me Straight, Gosford Films (Scotland — United Kingdom)
- Give Us a Goal, dir. Tom Clark (Scotland — United Kingdom)
- Escape to Freedom, dir. Mr Coleman Dec’d or Lanark Cine Club (Scotland — United Kingdom)
- Greg’s Film Tapes, dir. Hryhorii Porytskyi (Ukrainian SSR)
- Untitled, dir. Yurii Kondratenko (Ukrainian SSR)
- Walking with Dogs, dir. Volodymyr Trushkevych (Ukrainian SSR)
- Welcome to Moldova, dir. Serhii Pashchenko (Ukrainian SSR)
- Son, dir. Volodymyr Duda (Ukrainian SSR)
- Encounters, dir. Ihor Kozak (Ukrainian SSR)
- The Tree, dir. Viktor Kyzyma (Ukrainian SSR)
- Profession: Restorer, dir. Liliia Volkova (Ukrainian SSR)
- My Weekend, dir. Orest Bachmaha (Ukrainian SSR)
UK film programme at Docudays UA 2021 includes:
DOCU/SHORT Competition
- Talamanca, dir. Davide Marino, UK, 2020
There is a sound echoing across the forest of Talamanca. It triggers the extraordinary in the ordinary universe of Justo, a BriBri farmer, father and adventurer. It is the blow of the here and now, the quintessence of what is alive that expands a story made by imaginative materialities enshrined amidst Earth’s liveliness and indigenous worldly epic. A film on the BriBri present in Talamanca, on its restless awakening and its companion wonders.
Linoleum presents: Daddycatted
- One Last Dance, dir. Will Rowson, United Kingdom, 2016
Told from a daughter’s perspective, seen through her father’s eyes. One Last Dance explores how it felt watching her father slowly forget everything he knew.
Linoleum presents: Who are ‘the healthy’?
- Blue Light, dir. Harriet Francis Croucher, United Kingdom, 2017
Emergency service personnel talk about the realities of post-traumatic stress disorder, and its impact on their lives and their families.
- M.E., dir. Alexandra Hohner, United Kingdom, 2017
M.E. is an animated documentary about an invisible illness also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or M.E. This is an experiment using different modes of representation: creating a simulation of photophobia by using bright contrast and flashing white frames. Olly’s room is a safe place that protects him from being overwhelmed outside, but at the same time isolates him from the world.
DOCU/АРТ
- The Filmmaker's House, dir. Marc Isaacs, United Kingdom, 2020
When the Filmmaker is told his next film must be about crime, sex or celebrity to get funded, he takes matters into his own hands and begins shooting in his home with a cast of characters connected to his own life. Two English builders, employed to replace the garden fence, temporarily remove the barrier between the house and a Pakistani neighbour, and a homeless Slovakian man charms the Filmmaker’s Colombian cleaner into letting him in. What follows tests everyone’s ideas of boundaries and hospitality.
DOCU/CLASS
- 28 March at 17.00
Emma Davie: Editing in Creative Documentaries
What are creative documentaries? What are the available approaches to editing these films? Filmmaker, tutor and jury member of the DOCU/WORLD competition Emma Davie will talk about her editing experience. Her latest work, the feature documentary Becoming Animal, which was made and edited in cooperation with Peter Mettler, has been nominated for awards at CPH:DOX, Documenta Madrid, and Docs Against Gravity. Emma teaches documentary filmmaking at the Edinburgh College of Art, and consults filmmaking crews in person and at international workshops.
- 30 March at 17.00
Film troubadours: Archivation and Actualisation of Amateur Films
Why is vernacular cinema valuable? Who is in charge of collecting amateur films? How can we watch amateur movies? This is what the authors of the Film Troubadours: Scotland and Ukraine programme will discuss.
Special Event
- Becoming Animal, dir. Emma Davie, Peter Mettler, Switzerland, UK, 2018
Shot in Grand Teton National Park, this immersive essay film draws to-gether the distinct sensibilities of filmmakers Emma Davie and Peter Mettler and philosopher David Abram to encounter the spaces where humans and animals meet. A subversive nature film in which we sharpen our senses to witness the so-called natural world — which in turn witnesses us. Moose clash ant-lers and a snail's body becomes a vast landscape, while the myriad sensory tools of cinema explore our complicity with this ‘more-than-human world.