Festival of Documentary Films

‘Theatreconnekt’ in association with ‘Dr. Vayala Vasudevan Pillai Trust’ is organizing a festival of documentary films on theatre.The festival will feature rare documentary films made on theatre and theatre-making around the world in the recent past. The festival is intended also to explore how different media of creative expressions are looked at and perform to each other. The event is in arrangement with Goethe Institute & India Foundation for the Arts.

The event is conducted from 20 to 25 October 2014 at 6.30pm at Vayala Cultural Center, ‘Sabarmati’, Civil Lane, Ayyanthole, Thrissur: 680 003. Entry is free on ‘first come first serve’ basis.

Schedule: 

20 Oct: Arna's Children (Palestine, Director: Juliano Mer Khamis, Duration: 84mins)

21 Oct : Parzifal In Isfahan (Germany, Director: Bruno Schneider, Duration: 33mins)

              Mayabazar (India, Director:K M Madhusudhanan, Duration: 60mins)

22 Oct : The Nine Months (India, Director:Merajur Rehman Baruah, Duration: 77mins)

23 Oct : Addicted to Acting (Germany, Director: Andres Veiel, Duration: 108mins)

24 Oct : Natak Jari Hai (India, Director: Lalit Vachani,Oct Duration: 84mins)

25 Oct : The Reproduction Cricis (Germany, Director: Jorg Adolph & Gereon Wetzel, Duration: 84mins)

For more details :  www.theatreconnekt.com or call  (+91 94962.17218, Basil)

Package of Films on Theatre

Natak Jari Hai (India/2005) (Supported by India Foundation for Arts) Dir. Lalit Vachani (84mins, Hindi with English Sub)

‘Natak Jari Hai’ a documentary on Jan Natya Manch (JANAM), critically explores its history and contemporary practices. Combining archival footage and documentation of contemporary performances, the film especially focuses on the Nukkad Natak (street theatre), and its ability to create innovative contexts that facilitate significant involvement on the part of its audience. 

Lalit Vachani is a documentary filmmaker and producer/director of the New Delhi based Wide Eye Film.

 Mayabazar (India/2006) (Supported by Indian Foundation for Arts) Dir. K M Madhusudhanan (60mins, Telugu with Eng Sub)

‘Mayabazar’ is a documentary film on Surabhi Theatre, a rare institution of family groups that leads nomadic life by performing dramas in villages with a track record of more than 120 years. The film, envisaged as a journey with the Surabhi, examines the everyday activities of these travelling actors and their families, rehearsals, exercises, the staging of the plays based on the epics and the puranas, the audience, sets, make-up and costume design. The film also explores the traces of Parsi theatre, silent cinema from the Phalke-era and the paintings of Raja Ravi Varma in the design of the theatre company’s sets and costumes.

K.M. Madhusudhanan is an Indian film maker and artist . He is a maker of several documentaries, and fiction films and has won national and international awards including five State Awards in Kerala.

Parzifal in Isfahan (Germany/2003) Dir: Bruno Schneider (33 min, German with Eng. Subtitled)

‘Parzifal in Isfahan’, a film by Bruno Schneider, reports a theater trip to Iran. In October 2003, the ‘Theater im Marienbad’ (Freiburg, Germany) took an unusual trip to Iran. The lead role in ‘Parzifal’ (Parzifal: meaning disambiguation; is Richard Wagner’s controversial opera written in 1882) was played by the famous German dramatist and writer Tancred Dorst. Parzifal was the first production of a Western theater company in Isfahan since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

The Nine Months (India/2010) (Supported by Indian Foundation for Arts) Dir. Merajur Rehman Baruah (77mins, Assamese with Eng Sub)

‘The Nine Months’ documents the story of Assam’s ‘mobile theatre’ companies that tours towns and villages, carrying their own stage equipment, generators and even the auditorium in trucks. This film explores the history, form, style and aesthetics of Assam’s mobile theatre.

Merajur Rehman Baruah is an independent documentary filmmaker based in Delhi.

Theatre of War (USA/2008) Dir. John W Walter (95mins, Eng, with Subtitles)

Theater of War uses the rehearsal process of a play production as a lens through which to investigate German playwright Bertolt Brecht's ideas on theater, politics, and war. Staged by the Public Theater in New York's Central Park, the production starred Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline.

John W Walter has emerged as the medium’s most eloquent and entertaining cultural historian in the field of documentary film making.

Arna’s Children (Palestine/2004) Dir: Juliano Mer Khamis (84 min, Arabic/English/Hebrew with English Subtitles)

Arna Mer Khamis was a legendary activist against the Israeli Occupation. Born into a Jewish family, she married a Palestinian Arab and spent her life campaigning for justice and human rights in her homeland. Arna founded an alternative education system for Palestinian children whose lives had been disrupted by Israeli occupation. In the Jenin refugee camp, Arna opened a theatre group where she taught the children to express anger, bitterness and fear through acting and art. The children slowly grew to trust and to love Arna. Arna’s son, Juliano Mer Khamis, was a director at the theater group and filmed his mother and the children rehearsing and performing over a six year period. When Arna died of cancer in 1995, the theater group struggled to continue for another two years but ultimately did not survive. Five years after Arna’s death, Juliano, now one of the region’s leading actors, returns to the camp to discover what happened to Arna’s children. Shifting back and forth in time, Mer Khamis’s film juxtaposes the sweet-faced young boys with the militants and martyrs they become. Arna’s Children reveals the tragedy and horror of young lives trapped by the circumstances of occupation.

Juliano Mer Khamis:  The Palestinian-Israeli actor Juliano Mer-Khamis (Born 1958), was a successful stage and screen performer, film-maker and activist, widely known for his work as the artistic director of the ‘Freedom Theatre’ in the refugee camp in the West Bank town of Jenin in Palestine. On April 4, 2011, Juliano was shot dead by a man in mask outside the Freedom Theatre – an end he had predicted three years ago on Israeli television.

Addicted to Acting (Die Spielwütigen/Germany/2004) Director: Andres Veiel (108min Eng. Subtitled)

Stephanie, Karina, Constanze and Prodromos are among the nearly 30 of more than 1,000 applicants a year group who have been admitted to study at the Academy of Dramatic Arts "Ernst Busch" in Berlin. Andres Veiel has accompanied over seven years with the camera, showing her audition for the entrance examination, their successes and failures, talk to them about their dreams and goals and supports them in their first steps in professional life. In his fascinating long-term documentation Andres Veiel tells a story of growing up, stands cons-from finding your own path and overcoming. Gingerly, the camera approaches the faces and captures the difficult to access union, often tiny, but crucial moments of success and failure.

Andres Veiel:Documentary maker and screenwriter, born in 1959 in Stuttgart.

 The Reproduction Crisis (Die Reporduktionskriese/Germany/2007) Directors: Jörg Adolph and Gereon Wetzel (84 min, German, Eng. Subtitled)

An author interviewed people on the subject of fertility and a director rehearses with six actors at Hamburg's Thalia Theater, to make this documentary material come alive on stage. But how much Authentic withstand the director's theater? "The Reproduction Crisis" brings drama work and real people in a fictional dialogue, confronted theater life with authentic life stories, told by the documentary in the theatrical and the theatricality in the documentary.

A female author interviews people about the desire to have children while a stage director rehearses with six actors at the Hamburg Thalia Theater so that this documental material can be brought` to life on stage. But just how much authenticity can authorial theater was? 'The Reproduction Crisis' brings stagecraft and real people together in a fictional dialogue. The life of the theater is confronted with authentic life stories. The movie discusses the documental within the theatrical and the theatrical within the documental. The film takes a glance at the Difficulties of reproduction - in life and on stage. 

Jörg Adolph:  Jörg Adolph is a  Munich-based documentarian.

Gereon Wetzel:  Gereon was works as a freelance filmmaker, author and lecturer in Munich. Since 2007, he frequently joins Jörg Adolph in making of documentaries.