Punto De Vista Film Festival 2005

Platicando (Chatting)

Marisa Lafuente

Through telephone calls with relatives and friends back home, Chatting peers into the lives of immigrants living in Madrid. A camera set up in public phone booths captures a mixture of dreams, frustrations, lies, routines, and visa status problems. The documentary was shot in March 2004 during the parliamentary elections and in the tumultuous hours following M-11. The uncertainty and fear spawned by the tragedy is reflected in the conversations of these immigrants.

Bandits

Zaza Rusadze

BANDITS (2003) retraces the roots of the escapade of a group of Georgians in their twenties who hijacked an Aeroflot passenger plane on November 18, 1983 from Tbilisi.

A diary from the next world

Oxana Barkovskaya

This documentary—forbidden for broadcast in Russia—is based upon the diaries of a survivor of the October 2000 terrorist attack on a Moscow musical theater.

66 sezón (66 Seasons)

Peter Kerekes

A documentary film about the Kosice swimming pool where history came to bathe. Seen through several stories which unfolded between the years 1936 and 2002, the film captures 66 seasons at the popular swimming pool, and the same number of years in the history of Central and Eastern Europe.

The sky turns

Mercedes Alvarez

At La Aldea, in the Soria hills of northern Spain, only 14 villagers remain. Mercedes was the last baby to be born in the village. Accompanied by painter, who tries to capture light and mist, she discovers numerous traces of history. On the hills, dinosaurs once walked, the Celtibers built farms, the Romans their villas and the Saracens a castle with a tower. The last inhabitants know all the stories and can tell all the legends. Little by little, the present has invaded the landscape: the castle will be converted into a luxury hotel, a hill ridge is spiked with wind farms. On television, news of a distant war rekindle memories of another… a civil war. An election campaign flits on and off the screen. Is the next step a trip to Mars?

铁西区 (Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks)

Wang Bing

In the heyday of communism, the Tie Xi district in northeastern China was a shining example for the rest of the country. This huge government-controlled factory site provided work for more than a million people and provided shelter for many families dreaming of economic progress. Nowadays, these industrial areas with vacant hangars and weather-beaten work platforms are just a shadow of their former glory.
This nine-hour masterpiece by Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing explores the inescapable decay of China's biggest and oldest industrial area. In three sections entitled "Rust," "Remnants" and "Rails," Wang shows a Chinese society in transition, and the impact of a transformed economy on the hopes and dreams of the workers.
Long, slow shots follow the remaining workers as they go about their daily tasks, the railway tracks that connect the various sections of the site, and the families living in the desolate residential areas. The repetitive shots of mechanical activity—trains coupling and uncoupling, cranes loading and unloading—are the death twitches of an area that has no place in the new era.