cyprus cultural events - Feb 21-22-23 IF Films at Onar Village organised by Sidestreets

Heidi Trautmann

Feb 21-22-23 IF Films at Onar Village organised by Sidestreets 2/12/2014 WHAT IS !f ² ? The festival's pioneering film distribution project connects communities in 31 cities for 5 years. This year it will take place on 21-22-23 February. !f ² is a ground-breaking alternative film distribution and sharing project. Organized in partnership with the quality cinema website MUBI, !f İstanbul will reach audiences in 31 cities around Turkey and in neighbouring countries. Our partners from around Turkey as well as in Nicosia, Gyumri, Yerevan, Jerusalem and Ramallah will screen five festival films simultaneously as Istanbul in their respective cities on the last three days of the festival. The system is simple: Universities, unions, women's groups or other NGOs in these cities volunteer to be a supporting branch of !f ² and organise a screening venue. The online cinema website MUBI works in collaboration with !f ² to allow our partners access to five festival films with high resolution and quality. Q&A sessions with directors following the screenings are also broadcast live. Audiences in different cities thus have the opportunity to engage directly with the guest director or producer who is in Istanbul. The vision is to connect diverse cities and communities, building bridges through the shared medium of cinema. !f ² 2014: Istanbul Live Films: Miele / Honey Italy, France - 2013 - 96' - Colour - DCP - Italian “I wanted the tension and the weight of this event (death) to be felt, sacred and grave, but without a trace.” Among the endless stories that can get two people together, Honey offers a soft yet shocking one. Irene has a touching job: she helps the terminally ill to die in a quick and peaceful way. She looks like an uneasy angel by the deathbeds, but she is also assured that she’s doing an honorable thing, mediating a respected end. Things take a turn as she meets Carlo, an elderly, grouchy and charismatic architect who also yearns to end his suffering. After he takes the medicine from Irene, we learn that he is not ill but extremely unhappy and tired of living. Irene, this time comes close to helping someone commit suicide, and as she runs after Carlo to change his mind, the line between life and death gets blurred. Honey does not take the easy way out, and manages to tell this tough story in a distant and positive manner. The film creates solid ground out of fragile distances between people. Festivals 2013 Cannes, Brussels, EFA,Zurich About the Director Award winning actress Valeria Golino, who received the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival with her film Storia d’amore (1986), makes her directorial debut with Honey. Honey (2013) premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. ************** Gabrielle Canada - 2013 - 104' - Colour - DCP - French “At the beginning she is a child and at the end she is a woman… I wanted something very sensual, like pure love, like the first time, but a beautiful first time.” Most likely the sweetest, most sensual and most innocent love story of the year. Gabrielle is a glowing 25-year-old woman with Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder marked by cognitive underdevelopment as well as gregariousness and advanced musical skills. She lives in a group home, with her friends, among whom is her love, Martin. When Gabrielle and Martin want to explore their feelings for one another physically, they are faced with the restrictions of the institution they’re living in. For Martin’s mother too, physical manifestations of their love are not acceptable. As Gabrielle awakens to her intimate cravings, her journey to independence will also begin. Gabrielle moves with the sweetest of rhythms, dancing between themes of innocence, independence and sexual freedom. This dance will most likely make it the unforgettable love story of this year. Festivals 2013 Locarno Audience Award / 2013 Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton About the Director Louise Archambault studied film at Concordia University. Her first feature was Familia (2005), which premiered at Toronto Film Festival and won the Best Canadian First Feature Film award. Gabrielle (2013) is her latest film. ************ Everyday Rebellion Austria, Switzerland, Germany - 2013 - 118' - Colour - DCP - Spanish, Farsi, Arabic, Russian, English “I’m dedicating myself to the resistance because my father didn’t do enough.” Everyday Rebellion is not just a contemporary document, but also a call for utopia. A cross-media documentary about creative forms of non-violent protest and civil disobedience worldwide, Everyday Rebellion comes as a breath of fresh air in these pregnant times. Moving around the world with the Occupy movement in New York, The Indignados in Spain, the Arab Spring in Egypt, the non-violent uprisings in Syria, and briefly through Taksim, this poetry of a documentary is a reminder that today’s struggles are all connected— they should be considered as one. Through interviews with the Yes Men, Femen, Srdja Popovic, John Jackson, and other passionate activists, Everyday Rebellion is a celebration of peaceful protest and the possibilities that it opens up. As a documentary, it gives voice to all those who decide not to use violence to try to change a violent system, and as a project (www.everydayrebellion.com), it’s a growing network that ties many of the ideas, methods and passionate people mentioned in the film together. Festivals 2013 CPH:DOX, IDFA About the Director The Riahi Brothers were born in Iran. They immigrated to Austria with their parents as political refugees in 1983. They have written, directed and edited several award-winning documentaries and shorts. Everyday Rebellion (2013) is their first feature-length documentary together. ************ Pelo Malo / Bad Hair Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, Germany - 2013 - 93' - Colour - DCP - Spanish -“Grandma, can you straighten my hair?” -“Even better, I can turn you into a singer.” A kid and a mom, who are waiting for their lives to change. 9-year-old Junior lives in public housing apartments with his single mom and little sister. Junior and his mom’s lives are on a straight line that never leads anywhere. Junior’s long lasting dream is to straighten his curly hair, wear his dancing costume and become that figure in his head. His mother’s dream is to find the life she thinks she deserves, via employment bureaus. As soon as Junior’s so called weird requests come up, his mother panics and tries to intervene with the boy’s dreams. A dramatic cold war eventually rises between the mom who is trying to raise her boy in a way boys should be raised in order for them to become “proper men”, and a boy who is trying to create his own persona. Shot in minimalistic style, the film is asking questions about the first awareness of being different, through a relationship of a mom and a son. Bad Hair uses the story of the little boy’s hair in order to tell how the dreams of Junior’s mom fail when Junior’s dream just starts to grow. Festivals 2013 San Sebastián Golden Seashell / 2013 Toronto, London, Torino, Thessaloniki About the Director Born in Venezuela, Mariana Rondón studied animation and video art in Paris, and cinema in Cuba. Her feature films include A la medianoche y media (1999), which she co-directed with Marité Ugás, Postcards From Leningrad (2007), and Bad Hair (2013) ************** Alleine Tanzen / Dancing Alone Germany - 2012 - 98' - Colour - DCP - Turkish, German “Mother, he’s not hitting you, he loves you... he loves you beatingly. Mother, the bruises are love marks!” “Can I ever find happiness if my parents and their parents have not already found it?” Through a little girl’s diary entries, and some old VHS recordings, we begin to get to know a family. The director is Biene Pilavcı who, at 12 years of age, decided that the bursts of violence at home were too much to handle and had herself moved into a children’s home. Now at 33, she is aware that the pain, which remains from all that was lived yet never talked about, is too much to handle, and goes back to her family, donned with her camera this time. Though Dancing Alone was screened formerly at the 5th Which Human Rights? Film Festival, we chose to screen it again—a first at !f. This is because Dancing Alone is an incredibly special piece of filmmaking; a powerful lesson in the healing powers of the courage to look pain in the eyes. Also, this is no doubt a film that has to be seen everywhere in Turkey. Hence, it will be shown in 36 different locations, through !f2. Festivals 2013 Golden Orange / 2013 Duhok About the Director Born in 1977 in Stuttgart. She founded a cultural center in Spain with her friends. In 2005, she started studying in Deutsche Filmund Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB). Dancing Alone (2012) is her graduation film.