The Village Under The Forest has won the Audience Award at Encounters South African International Documentary Festival for Best South African Film, while Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present was voted Best International Film.
Dylan Valley’s Incarcerated Knowledge and Tamarin Kaplan and Marla Altschuler’s The White Picket Fence Project came second and third respectively in the vote for Best South African Film, while two Oscar nominees came second and third for Best International Film: Dror Moyeh’s The Gatekeepers and David France’s How To Survive A Plague.
The Village Under The Forest explores the hidden remains of the destroyed Palestinian village of Lubya, which lies under a purposefully cultivated forest plantation called South Africa Forest.
Directed by Emmy-winner Mark J Kaplan and written and narrated by scholar and author Heidi Grunebaum, The Village Under The Forest unfolds as a personal meditation from the Jewish Diaspora.
“The controversy that has surrounded the film speaks to the power of documentaries,’ says festival director Lesedi Oluko Moche. “The film’s two sold-out screenings at Encounters really got people talking. You’d expect a film like this from a Palestinian filmmaker, but it’s been made by two Jews who bravely confront, interrogate and take responsibility for the actions of their forebears, something we haven’t seen in many films out of South Africa.’
The Artist is Present follows Marina Abramovic as she prepares for what may be the most important moment of her career: a major retrospective of her work and the biggest exhibition of performance art in MoMA’s history.
Key to the exhibition is a live event that spanned seven hours every day for three months: the artist sitting still, looking into the eyes of hundreds of her audience members, one at a time, and witnessed by hundreds of thousands of others, without a break for anything.
“The Encounters Audience Award is just the latest prize for this moving film, which also won the Panorama Audience Award at Berlin,’ says Lesedi. “People were regularly in tears at the sold-out screenings during Encounters; it’s a challenging, sexy, uplifting film.’
The 15th Encounters South African International Documentary Festival ran from 6 to 16 June 2013 at The Bioscope in Jozi and at Nu Metro at the V&A Waterfront and The Fugard in Cape Town.
Encounters was sponsored by the NFVF, Bertha Foundation, City Of Cape Town, Wesgro and V&A Waterfront. Guests travel courtesy of Goethe Institut, German Consulate, American Consulate, British Council and French Institute SA.
For more information, visit www.encounters.co.za.
Watch and embed:
The Village Under The Forest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISmj31rJkGQ
The Artist Is Present
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcmcEZxdlv4
Incarcerated Knowledge
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E33nV_i-TM
The White Picket Fence Project
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_zSphWwDg
The Gatekeepers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpk71yrQUQM
How To Survive A Plague
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwhFS1mUaVY
Update on The Village Under The Forest
The Village Under The Forest is screening at The Bioscope in Johannesburg on 27 June 2013 at 19h30 and is available to watch online at http://www.villageunderforest.com/stream-online/, although streaming is only available to viewers in Africa and Israel at this stage.
The movie is also screening at 19h30 on Thursday 18 July and Wednesday 31 July at The Bioscope.
For more information on screenings as they’re announced, keep an eye on http://www.villageunderforest.com/screenings/.
