Two 2013 Oscar nominees, The Gatekeepers and How To Survive A Plague, will screen
at the 15th Encounters South African International Documentary Festival, which runs
from 6 to 16 June in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Also in the Encounters line-up are winners from Berlin, namely Marina Abromovitch:
The Artist is Present and In Heaven Underground. From DOK Leipzig comes
Columbianos and from Sundance comes Queen of Versailles and The House I Live In.
“Documentaries broaden our experience of the world, showing us places few of us
would otherwise see,’ says new festival director Lesedi Oluko Moche.
Venues for Encounters 2013 are The Bioscope in Johannesburg and in Cape Town, Nu
Metro at the V&A Waterfront and The Fugard.
The varied Encounters line-up will take audiences from the biggest home in America
(Queen of Versailles) and the world’s richest apartment building (Park Avenue) to one
of Jordan’s poorest villages (Rafea: Solar Mamas); from the locker rooms of
Wimbledon (Venus & Serena) to behind-the-scenes at The Museum of Modern Art in
New York (Marina Abramovitch: The Artist Is Present); and from farms in Zimbabwe
(The Bag on My Back) to a 130-year-old Jewish cemetery in Berlin (In Heaven
Underground).
This year’s line-up also shines a spotlight on some of the world’s most debated
issues, including poverty (Poor Us: An Animated History; Rafea: Solar Mamas); the
war on drugs (The House I Live In); inter-cultural adoption (Mercy Mercy – A Portrait
of True Adoption); HIV/Aids (How To Survive a Plague); and the Israel / Palestine
conflict (The Gatekeepers, The Village Under The Forest).
There are also 13 documentaries investigating Africa. Comrade Presidente profiles
Mozambican president Samora Machel, while No Harm Done, which won Best
Documentary at FESPACO, is the story of agnostic Tunisian documentary filmmaker
Nadia el Fani’s double battle against cancer and a radical Islamist hate campaign.
Hot from Hot Docs, Riaan Hendricks’ The Devil’s Lair will have its African premiere as
the opening night film at Encounters. This a jarring story of fatherhood, drug dealers
and assassinations on the Cape Flats.
Aryan Kaganof’s An Inconsolable Memory follows the story of the Eoan Group from the
vibrant era of Cape Town’s District Six to present day.
Dylan Valley’s Incarcerated Knowledge follows a reformed gangster from his release
from Pollsmoor as he tries to turn his life around; Shannon Walsh and Arya Lalloo’s
Jeppe On a Friday is part Jozi travelogue, part urban allegory.
Mark Kaplan and Heidi Grunebaum’s The Village Under The Forest explores the hidden
remains of the destroyed Palestinian village of Lubya, which lies under the
purposefully cultivated forest plantation called South Africa Forest.
Shelley Barry’s Mr. Shakes – The Passion To Live follows the Port Elizabeth disco king;
and Tamarin Kaplan and Marla Altschuler’s award-winning The White Picket Fence
Project is a coming-of-age documentary about two young men: one in post-war
Kosovo, the other in Gugulethu
For more information, visit www.encounters.co.za, where trailers for the different
films are being added daily in the lead-up to the festival.
To stay informed, Like Encounters on http://www.facebook.com/EncountersDocFest or
follow @encountersdoc on Twitter.
