IDFA Competition for Dutch Documentary
Hinterland – A Child Soldier’s Road Back to South Sudan
Achterland – de weg terug naar Cuey Machar Albert Elings
The Netherlands, 2011 HD, color, 75 min Director: Albert Elings Photography: Eugenie Jansen, Kon Kelei Screenplay: Albert Elings, Eugenie Jansen Editing: Piet Oomes Sound: Albert Elings, Marc Lizier Production: Suzanne van Voorst for IDTV Docs Executive Production: Ilja Roomans for IDTV Docs Screening Copy: IDTV Docs Involved TV Channel: HUMAN
Albert Elings:
The Threat (1989), The Vision & The Image (1991), The Love, Her Last Days (1991), Through Different Eyes (1992), Living Apart (1993), Direction Hollywood (1993), A Voice on the Krim (1994), Eyes Like Yours (1994), The Last Line (1997), The Monument (1999), Kitty (2000), A Daily Life (2000), A Memorable Day (2001), The Winking Machine (2004), Diary (2005), What Stays Moves (2007)
Albert Elings & Eugenie Jansen:
WORLD PREMIERE
In 2002, the young Sudanese asylum seeker Kon Kelei starred in the Dutch feature film Sleeping Rough, about the friendship between a Sudanese refugee and a grouchy war veteran. At that time, the former child soldier had just been refused asylum in the Netherlands. During the shoot and afterward, documentary filmmaker Albert Elings taught Kon how to use a video camera and how to make a video diary of his life; Kon’s footage is used in the film as well. When the situation in Sudan is considered safe enough, Elings follows Kon on his first trip back. They visit Kon’s family and his place of birth and travel through his war-torn country. This voyage is intercut with footage of Kon’s years in the Netherlands. He eventually obtains a residence permit, goes to law school, and uses collection campaigns and lectures to fight for the fate of the countrymen he left behind, and for whom he feels considerably responsible. His studies allow him to help them, but his stay abroad has also altered his view of his home country. This leads to some painfully moments, yet Kon is determined to help build the new nation of South Sudan, which seceded from Sudan this summer.
Scary Man (1996); The Comet (1998), The Royal Wedding Tapes (2002), Foreland (2005), Fields of Margraten (2010)
IDFA Competition for Dutch Documentary
I Am a Woman Now Michiel van Erp
WORLD PREMIERE
The Netherlands, 2011 HD, color / black-and-white, 80 min Director: Michiel van Erp Photography: Mark van Aller Editing: Hinne Brouwer Sound: Rob Dul Music: Louis ter Burg Production: Monique Busman & Margreet Ploegmakers & Jessie Verbrugh for De Familie World Sales: CAT&Docs Distribution for the Netherlands: Cinema Delicatessen Screening Copy: De Familie Involved TV Channel: VPRO Pitched at the Forum 2010
Michiel van Erp:
The Queen on Her Way (2000), Don’t Forget Me (2002), Het Defilé (2004), Lost Heart (2004), Divina Gloria (fiction, 2006), Funfair Behind the Dikes (2006), Sylvia Kristel: nu (2007), Veterans Day (2007), Volle zalen (2007), Thermos, Sex in the Sauna (2008), Stuck (50), Smoeder (fiction, 2008), Fear (2009), Welcome to Holland Season II (2009), Erwin Olaf on Beauty and Fall (2009), Beatrix, Queen (2009), Toen zij uit Rotterdam vertrokken (2010), Erop of eronder (2011), a.o.
Starting in 1956, people who wanted to have a sex change operation could go to gynecologist Georges Burou in Casablanca – without having to undergo any psychological assessment. Filmmaker Michiel van Erp asks some of these pioneers, all old women now, if the choice that they made back then has changed their lives as they had hoped. How did the outside world react to this first generation of transsexuals? A charming Belgian woman is eternally grateful to Burou, who passed away in the late 1980s. She will always keep her operation a secret from any possible partner – for her, that’s part of the deal. A distinguished British woman, who became a star in Paris after her transformation, still encounters rejection – and loneliness: “Once you get white hair, you seem to disappear.” A German woman agrees: “At the time, I never imagined being an old lady. That wasn’t part of the fantasy.” She was a married man when the opportunity for the operation arose. “I found myself looking in a shop window, wondering what I’d look like in that dress. Then I realized: this is never gong to go away.” Van Erp visits significant places and people with these and other ladies, and they reflect on their eventful lives with the help of old photographs and home videos.
89