LIVING summer films

FILM PROGRAMME FOR LIVING

MANENBERG
Manenberg is a suburb of Cape Town in South Africa –  an area that was built during the apart­­heid era to house low-income black families. Today, it’s a worn-down, overpopulated slum with great social problems, but it is also a neighbourhood with strong ties among the residents of the decrepit town houses.
Manenberg. Denmark, 2010, 58 mins. Language: English without Danish subtitles. Directors: Karen Waltorp, Christian Vium. Script: Karen Waltorp & Christian Vium. Camera: Christian Vium. Sound: Søren Lyngsø Knudsen & Morten Riis. Editing: Rasmus Stens­gaard Madsen. Cast: Warren Brickwa & Fazline Bruintjes. Producers: Karen Waltorp, Chris­tian Vium. Production: WALTORP VIUM
Showtimes:  28 July at 3:00 p.m., 2 August at 7:30 p.m.,  9 August at 7:30 p.m.,  16 August at 11:30 a.m., 25 August at 7:30 p.m.

DREAMS IN COPENHAGEN
Dreams in Copenhagen is a portrait of Copenhagen. The film is about the physical surroun­dings that help to form our lives: the places we dream of. the houses we wake up in, the doors we go in and out of, and the roads and streets we live and travel on. But the film is also about how the way we live our lives affects those same surroundings. The aesthetic of the film reflects this double approach, as the camera quite specifically focuses on the mate­ri­ality of the city and leaves the people in the pictures as indistinct figures or peripherally placed in the scene.
Copenhagen Dreams. Denmark, 2009, 70 mins. Camera: Henrik Bohn Ipsen. Director: Max Kestner. Editor: Anne Østerud. Composer: Jóhann Jóhannsson. Sound: Peter Albrechtsen. Script: Dunja Gry Jensen, Max Kestner. Producer: Henrik Veileborg. Production: Upfront Films with support from the Danish Film Institute, Fonden Realdania, Dreyerfonden in collaboration with DR TV.
Showtimes: 26 July at 3:00 p.m., 4 August at 7:30 p.m., 11 August at 3:00 p.m., 18 August at 11:30 a.m.,  23 August at 7:30 p.m.

MY PLAYGROUND
My Playground explores the way parkour and freerunning are changing the perception of urban space and how the spaces and buildings they move through are changing them. Mainly set in Copenhagen, the film follows Team JiYo as they explore the city and encoun­ter the obstacles it presents. Award-winning architect Bjarke Ingels, founder of BIG Archi­tects, is fascinated by the way Team JiYo approaches architecture and takes the team to his buildings to explore and demonstrate their skills. The film travels around the world – from Denmark to Japan, the USA, the UK and China – to explore where urban mobility is heading.
My Playground, Denmark, 2000. 50 mins., English subtitles. Writer, camera, editor, producer and director: Kaspar Astrup Schröder. Sound design: Jacques Pedersen, Kaspar Astrup Schröder. Music: Mikkel Metal and Broadcast 2000
Showtime: 2 August at 11:30 a.m.

HOMELESS
Homeless paints a portrait of three human beings whose wandering life is harsh but also full of human warmth. We meet Kenny Emil, Nuka and Norto, all of whom were born and bred in Greenland, and all of whom have ended up in a life on the Copenhagen streets. Every day the three get into fights, with each other and with a social system that often alie­nates more than it supports. Homeless. Denmark, 2010, 55 mins. with English subtitles. Director: Ditte Haarløv Johnsen. Script: Ditte Haarløv Johnsen. Camera: Minka Jakerson, Ditte Haarløv. Sound: Johnsen Sylvester Holm, Frank Mølgaard Knudsen. Editing: Jeppe Bødskov. Cast: Norto, Emil, Nuka. Producer: Anders Drud Jordan. Production: Nature & Science
Showtimes: 26 July at  7:30 p.m., 4 August at 11:30 a.m., 16 August at 7:30 p.m., 23 August at 3:00 p.m.

CITIZEN ARCHITECT
In 1993 the late architect Samuel Mockbee started the Rural Studio, a design and construc­tion training programme in which students create striking architecture for impoverished communities in rural Alabama. Through frank, passionate interviews with Mockbee, the film shows how a group of students use their creativity, ingenuity and compassion to craft a home for their charismatic client, Jimmie Lee Matthews, known to locals as Music Man be­cause of his zeal for old R&B and soul records. Interviews with Mockbee’s peers and scenes with those he has influenced infuse the film with a wider discussion of the role of architecture as related to issues like poverty, class, race, education, social change and citizenship. The documentary makes a strong statement about architects and the architec­tural profession – offering a new perspective on who we should be designing for and how we should be designing.
Citizen Architect. USA, 2010, 60 mins. Language: English without Danish subtitles. Director & producer: Sam Wainwright Douglas. - 2010 Big Beard Films.
Showtimes: 28 July at 11:30 a.m., 2 August at 3:00 p.m.

DARK DAYS
Dark Days is a documentary about a group of people living in an abandoned section of the New York City underground, the area known as the Freedom Tunnel. The tunnels are dark, damp and intimidating and it is very easy to let your imagination run riot. Rats are your con­stant companions in the more garbage-ridden passageways, and you learn quickly that your ears, not your eyes, must become your guide. The irony of the tunnel, however, is that it gets under your skin and after a while your initial assessment begins to change. You dis­cover peace in the darkness and comfort in the solitude. You build a shack that becomes a house, and in time it becomes your home. Cooking, washing, shaving and getting dressed, these daily tasks – as well as the filming of Dark Days – were done in near-darkness, and soon the homeless people Singer was documenting became the film crew.
Dark Days. USA, 2001, 84 mins. with English subtitles.
Production: Picture Farm. Black-and-white. 
Showtimes: 21 July at 11:30 a.m., 28 July at 7.30 p.m., 9 August at 3:00 p.m., 18 Auguts at 7:30 p.m., 25 August at 3:00 p.m. 


THE ARRIVALS
Who are they, all those people who try every day to breach the walls of ‘Fortress Europe’? At a small, humble immigration office in Paris we follow the life and everyday drama expe­ri­enced by two of the staff – and the even more chaotic and desperate everyday life of their many clients, who often arrive empty-handed, with no possessions and usually no papers. They are hoping for asylum and a new life in France. But the road to freedom and a new life in Europe is paved with almost inhuman bureaucracy, to the great frustration of both sides of the desk. The directors of the film put faces to the people who usually become statistics – and to those who have the job of receiving the latest arrivals.
Les arrivants. France 2009, 111 mins. French with English subtitles. Directors: Claudine Bories, Patrice Chagnard. Producer: Katya Larais. Production: Les Films d’Ici. 
Showtimes: 26 July at 11:30 a.m. , 11 August at 7:30 p.m., 16 August at 3:00 p.m. , 23 August at 11:30 a.m. 
 

LIFE 2.0.
Every day, in all corners of the globe, hundreds of thousands of users log on to Second Life, a virtual online world not entirely unlike our own. They enter a new reality whose inha­bitants assume alternate personas in the form of ‘avatars’ – digital alter egos that can be sculpted and manipulated at will, representing reality, fantasy, or a healthy mix of both. In this alternate landscape escapism is given free rein, relationships are formed, and a real-world economy thrives, effectively blurring the lines between reality and ‘virtual’ reality.
LIFE 2.0. USA, 2010, X mins. With English subtitles. Director: Jason Spingarn-Koff
Showtimes: 21 July at  7:30 p.m., 4 August at 3:00 p.m., 25 August at 11:30 a.m.

BOMBAY LUNCH
The film takes a look at the ‘lunch culture’ of Bombay, where lunch has been systematized with the delivery of private lunchboxes. We follow the lunch delivery men, the so-called Dabba Wallahs, who drive from home to home to pick up lunches and deliver them to family members at their workplaces. The film shows how food can be regarded as part of a local religious and cultural identity and thus as part of a ‘homing’ strategy.
Bombay Lunch. 2011. Directors Lau Leth Larsen, Martin Berthelsen, Amrit Gangar. Documentary film, 18 mins. With English subtitles.
Showtimes: 21 July at 3:00 p.m., 9 August at 11:30 a.m.

BURNING MAN. VOYAGE IN UTOPIA
The Burning Man Festival is held every year in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. 50,000 people live out their personal dreams in an alternative urban community.  For a week they live in alternative dwellings and vehicles that reflect all kinds of utopian ideas of a different world. In the documentary the founder, Larry Harvey, and the artist David Best talk about the magical attraction of the Burning Man experience. Burning Man. Voyage in Utopia. Director and scriptwriter: Laurent Le Gall © Free Run Pictures
Showtimes: 11 August at 11:30 a.m., 18 August at 3:00 p.m.