Rithy Panh’s Irradiated
A total of 47 films have been added to the IDFA 2020 program, in which “risk-taking artistic choices and fluid roles of artist and filmmaker come to the fore.”
IDFA 2020 announced October 6 titles in its Masters and Paradocs sections, and plugged the remaining gaps in Best of Fests.
In Masters, IDFA selects 18 titles from today’s recognised auteurs of documentary cinema. The festival statement reads:
“Rithy Panh’s Irradiated, winner of the Berlinale Documentary Award, masterfully contemplates the image of human suffering throughout history in a revolutionary film that approaches cinematic installation. In the long-awaited Gunda, Victor Kossakovsky intimately examines our relationship with animals as he invites audiences to fall in love with the titular character, a wonderful mother pig. Paris Caligrammes sees Ulrike Ottinger curate a rich archival history of 1960s Paris, in which the award-winning director stars alongside the great artists, thinkers, and revolutionaries of the day.
“Dieudo Hamadi’s Downstream to Kinshasa pays tribute to the survivors of the Six-Day War in Hamadi’s native Congo, finding poetry in stories of human resilience. European premieres include Sam Pollard’s MLK/FBI, an investigation into secret US documents that uncover Martin Luther King Jr. as the victim of the FBI’s decade-long witch hunt.
“Oscar-nominated director Hubert Sauper returns with Epicentro, a thought-provoking portrait of Cuba that charts the (neo)colonial history of the world’s so-called last communist country. Frederick Wiseman’s four-and-a-half-hour City Hallpresents the heart and soul of Boston policy-making, revealing the inner workings of the celebrated filmmaker’s hometown. Concert film extraordinaire David Byrne’s American Utopia offers a joyous meeting of minds between director Spike Lee and the Talking Heads frontman, celebrating Byrne’s unadulterated creativity live and on stage.”
In Paradocs, IDFA showcases 11 of the year’s best experimental documentary artworks. The festival narrative reads:
“Within the selection, several titles subvert the passing of time, pushing it to its cinematic limits. Purple Sea by Amel Alzakout and Khaled Abdulwahed plunges audiences into a capsized refugee boat via submerged body camera, as the clock ticks in real time. In 13, director Shinya Isobe condenses five years of astronomical activity into one 16mm short film, leaping across the color spectrum in 11 minutes of haptic bliss. Meanwhile, Anders Edström and C.W. Winter’s eight-hour The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) takes slow cinema to new heights, offering a slice of daily life in a small Japanese mountain village.
“Time also finds new meaning in the films with pre-existing footage, as several titles confront complex layers of representation and reappropriation, prompting audiences to question what they are really seeing. There Will Be No More Night by Éléonore Weber reworks video footage from American and French armed forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, deconstructing the first-hand perspective of a fighter pilot. In Geographies of Freedom, Miguel Peres dos Santos explores Shell’s legacy of colonial and environmental violence in Curaçao and its representation through propaganda films, news reports, and original cinematography. In Cause of Death, Jyoti Mistry reimagines the representation of violence against women through a powerful collage of archival scenes, animation, and spoken word.
“As part of IDFA’s ongoing collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Paradocs program also includes an evening of video art from the Stedelijk collection, curated by acclaimed artist Ahmet Öğüt.”
IDFA also announ
ces 18 more titles selected for the Best of Fests section. The complete program now includes 39 feature-length films, four mid-length films, and five shorts, with notable additions such as Francesca Mazzoleni’s Punta sacra, winner of the main award at Visions du Réel, and Catarina Vasconcelos’ The Metamorphosis of Birds, winner of a FIPRESCI Prize at this year’s Berlinale.
IDFA 2020 runs November 18 to 29 in Amsterdam venues, in addition to online screenings (November 18 to December 6) and online markets (November 16 to 20).
