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My graduation film Between Earth and Sky has been selected for the International Student Film Fest in Mexico (7-9 Nov)!
Unfortunately I am above the permitted age limit to participate in the competition. What can I say? Better late than never :)
In the meantime, I’m using this to spam by asking you to vote for the film and myself online at the FreeStyle Life Film Exhibition 2013. BES is competing for Best Short Film Audience Award and the Golden Swan Award for Outstanding Filmmaking. Everyone can vote once per day until the end of April so please make a few clicks when you have the time!
Over 200,000 people live in labour camps in North Korea at the moment. Prisoners end up there for a number of reasons, including rolling a cigarette with a newspaper that contains the image of the Dear Leader.
Shin Dong-Huyk was born on November 19, 1983 as a political prisoner in a North Korean re-education camp. He was a child of two prisoners who had been married by order of the wardens. His mother was a present to his father for good behavior. He spent his entire childhood and youth in Camp 14, in fact a death camp (read the rules of the camp here). He was forced to labor since he was six years old and suffered from hunger, beatings and torture, always at the mercy of the wardens. He knew nothing about the world outside the barbed-wire fences. At the age of 23, with the help of an older prisoner, he managed to escape. For months he traveled through North Korea and China and finally to South Korea, where he encountered a world completely strange to him.
Directed by Marc Wiese, Camp 14: Total Control Zone was awarded Grand Prize for Best Creative Documentary at the International Human Rights Film Festival in Geneva. The film's dramatic storytelling is possible due to the use of animation which brings Shin’s memories to life. In addition, two former North Korean high officers, who were involved in the prison camp system, also share their point of view. Their reality is so unbelievable that as Jay Weissberg from Variety says "There are some subjects so horrific, so far beyond our understanding, that the mind goes numb".
Last week I was talking to someone about a potential making-of documentary project and decided to refresh my memory and watch one of the best docs in the genre - LOST IN LA MANCHA (2000, dir. Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, narrated by Jeff Bridges, now on Netflix).
The film captures Terry Gilliam's attempt to get The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, a project he has been working on for over a decade, off the ground. The feature never sees daylight but the fantastic making-of documentary depicts Gilliam's quest to make this movie which strongly resembles Quixote's windmills battle.
If you haven't seen it - you are in for a treat or as Woody Allen calls it "extremely entertaining ... and every film director's worst nightmare!".
