8 and 10-13 June 2013
At The Cinema Museum
Dugard Way (off Renfrew Road)
London SE11 4TH
This Festival is an event for anybody who is interested in documentaries that rely on archival footage as a narrative vehicle.
The Festival aims to showcase international archive-based documentaries, some of which never get a showing in the UK.
Three of the documentaries featuring in this year’s Festival are UK premieres while the fourth is the London premiere.
Saturday, 8 June 2013 @ 2.30 p.m.
WORKSHOP WITH SHANE O’SULLIVAN AND SAM DWYER
A rare opportunity to spend an afternoon with two of the UK’s most accomplished archive producers. Shane O’Sullivan is a documentary filmmaker, whose recent films include the feature documentaries, RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy (2008) and Children of the Revolution (2011).
Sam Dwyer has worked on Marley and Crossfire Hurricane and has sourced footage for several Julien Temple films, including Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten.
Monday, 10 JUNE 2013 @ 7.30 p.m.
WHEN ALI CAME TO IRELAND ** UK PREMIERE ** FOLLOWED BY Q&A WITH DIRECTORS ROSS WHITAKER AND AIDEEN O’SULLIVAN
Winner of an Irish Film & Television Academy Award 2013.
From the makers of HOME TURF (*Official Selection* Hot Docs 2012) and BYE BYE NOW (*Winner* Silverdocs, Nashville 2011), WHEN ALI CAME TO IRELAND captures the madcap week when legendary boxer Muhammad Ali went to fight in Ireland at the height of his career.
Self proclaimed ‘World’s Strongest Publican’ Michael ‘Butty’ Sugrue pulled off a massive sporting coup in 1972 when he convinced Ali’s promoter that he was good for the $300k down-payment required to bring Ali to Ireland and then largely paid for proceedings in beer-stained bank notes.
The trip had a huge impact on those Ali met and, some say, on the man himself. The documentary reveals that his trip to Ireland influenced how Ali viewed white people in the aftermath of his conversion to Islam and his declarations that white people were devils.
The documentary by Ross Whitaker and Aideen O’Sullivan combines a wealth of archival material with colourful reminiscences to tell an unlikely tale that is infused with great warmth and moments of real hilarity.
Tuesday, 11 June 2013 @ 7.30 p.m.
ICI, ON NOIE LES ALGERIENS ** UK PREMIERE **
In response to the call of the Front de libération nationale (F.L.N., the National Liberation Front), thousands of Algerians from Paris and its surroundings march on October 17, 1961, to protest against the curfew imposed on them. This peaceful demonstration will be violently put down by the police. 50 years on, the filmmaker sheds light on this still taboo subject. Blending testimony and unseen archive footage, history and memory, past and present, the film relates the different stages in these events and reveals the strategy and methods applied at the highest level of the French state: manipulation of public opinion, the systematic challenge of every accusation, the censoring of information in order to prevent investigation…
Wednesday, 12 June 2013 @ 7.30 p.m.
UNFINISHED SPACES ** LONDON PREMIERE **
In 1961, three young, visionary architects were commissioned by Fidel Castro
and Che Guevara to create Cuba’s National Art Schools on the grounds of a
former golf course in Havana, Cuba. Construction of their radical designs began
immediately and the school’s first classes soon followed. Dancers, musicians and
artists from all over the country revelled in the beauty of the schools, but as the
dream of the Revolution quickly became a reality, construction was abruptly
halted and the architects and their designs were deemed irrelevant in the prevail-
ing political climate. Forty years later the schools are in use, but remain
unfinished and decaying. Castro has invited the exiled architects back to finish their
unrealized dream. Unfinished Spaces features intimate footage of Fidel Castro, revealing his devotion to creating a worldwide showcase for art, and it documents the struggle and passion of three revolutionary artists whose inspiration and ideals could ultimately
destroy them.
Thursday, 13 June 2013 @ 7.30 p.m.
FINDING THE FOOTPRINTS: A LOOK BACK AT MISE EIRE ** UK PREMIERE AND WINNER OF FOCAL AWARD FOR BEST USE OF FOOTAGE IN AN ARTS PRODUCTION **
More than fifty years on, the definitive story of Ireland's most famous documentary film, Mise Eire (I Am Ireland) is told through the eyes of its director, George Morrison, key creative personnel behind the production and ordinary Irish people who experienced the film upon its theatrical release in 1960. Lorg na gCos uses archival footage carefully and intertextually of Ireland over a range of key periods in its 20th century history, and is a film that deals fundamentally with the inherent power of archive footage, charting as it does, the complicated creation and cultural impact of Ireland's great archival film, Mise Eire (I Am Ireland).