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New documentary starring Colombian guerrilla
Maria Engqvist, ANNCOL - 23.11.2005 15:27
An unusual and powerful documentary from award-winning Danish Zentropa Real is portraying young recruits of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a target of the US ’war on terror’. "Guerrilla Girl" is having its European premiere this week at the prestigious IDFA festival in Amsterdam.
FARC recruit Isabel is the star of the new film "Guerrilla Girl"
Hidden deep in the Colombian jungle is a training camp of the guerrilla army of FARC. The film crew behind the documentary (Frank Piasecki Poulsen and Johannes T. Jensen) were smuggled across the border and gained access to the training camp, and were able to document 21-year-old Isabel's preparations to fight against the regime. For three months, they followed Isabel, who had recently taken leave of her family, boyfriend, her house and her studies, to be trained as a guerrilla fighter.
"People ask why Isabel leaves everything behind to join FARC," says film director Poulsen. "Well, the president of her country is a drug gangster. His regime is gunning down people who dare to speak out against him. Maybe the question really is, what are we in the international community doing supporting this guy?” Poulsen asks.
The film is the culmination of a process begun four years ago when the director and his assistant decided they wanted to make a "different" documentary.
"I think that politics and art go together. I didn't want to tell a big story or discover the truth, but to try and find out how they are and understand what they do. Then, each person can think what he wants," the director told Spanish news agency EFE in an interview.
Poulsen selected the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia to examine because it is the "oldest and largest liberation movement in Latin America" and because it had just been included on Washington's and the European Union's lists of terrorist organizations.
Poulsen, who has put together several projects about Africa for Denmark's public DR television network, knew he did not want to make a typical documentary with interviews and the like, but to narrate a living story from a more human perspective.
"We were living separately in a small camp to keep our distance and avoid making friends with the recruits. We told them to act as if we were not there," said Poulsen, who made up for his scanty Spanish with the help of Jensen, who had much experience in Latin America working for the Danish aid organization Danida.
The result of their labors is a 90-minute documentary showing daily life in a FARC training camp, the experiences of the recruits, their individual stories, their doubts and fears, their discussions and even their parties, with them dancing while warplanes fly over the area.
Ten kilograms (22 pounds) lighter and sick of the mud and humidity after a "brutal experience," Poulsen returned to Denmark with 50 hours of film, the originality of which convinced the prestigious Zentropa to produce the work with several of the country's best professionals and with funds provided by the Danish Film Institute.
Poulsen assumes that the film will generate controversy, since it depicts the FARC members "as people and not monsters." Regarding the guerrilla group, Poulsen says that he sees it "as the expression of a social conflict, a liberation movement that has fought for 30 years against a state that has terrorized its own people." Therefore, he hopes that the film can be shown in Colombia and that it will contribute toward "seeing the conflict from a new angle."
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| Read more about: kunst, cultuur en muziek | | supplements | | Film screens where and when | David - 23.11.2005 20:47
de rode jaren
friends of kim
You can see the film on:
11/27/2005, 11:45, City 2 (regular)
11/30/2005, 16:00, City 1 (regular)
12/2/2005, 20:15, City 1 (regular)
To reserve tickets call 020-4277452 or buy a ticket next to the City theatre on the Kleine Gartmanplantsoen.
Some other suggestions for Indymedia. A docu on Hans-Joachim Klein
DE TERRORIST HANS-JOACHIM KLEIN
hans-joachim klein: my life as a terrorist
Alexander Oey
Although in hindsight Hans-Joachim Klein feels misled, he takes full responsibility for his deeds. On behalf of the Revolutionary Cells, led by the notorious terrorist Carlos, Klein took the assembled ministers hostage at the OPEC headquarters in Vienna in December 1975. Three people got killed, Klein got seriously wounded. The kidnappers escaped - in a plane with a few hostages - via Algiers. Subsequently, Klein decided to turn his back on terrorism. From then on, he hid from both the police and his ex-comrades. Only in 1998 did he turn himself in. Six years later, Klein was released, and today he lives in the countryside of Normandy. Every day, he continues to live with the choices he made in his fervent militant years. After a troubled childhood, Klein found a "new family" in the left-wing scene in Frankfurt. Klein was none too bright, he admits, so they won him over pretty easily. After the action in Vienna, it dawned upon him how idiotic, criminal and underhanded it had been. Archival footage supports his account, which examines an idealistic young man's decent into violence and back.
Data:
11/30/2005, 12:00, Calypso (regular)
12/2/2005, 16:30, City 5 (regular)
and docu on the so-called Red Youth movement in the Netherlands
THE RED YEARS - WERE WE TERRORISTS?
de rode jaren - waren wij terroristen?
Leo de Boer
Thirty years later, they still react as if stung by a bee. This is how emotionally charged their memories are of their "red years," the period when their lives were determined by revolutionary ardour, by sincere indignation with the injustice in the world, but also by adventure and recklessness. They were prepared to fight, place bombs and use weapons. Some of them still consider the armed fight "a technical matter." Others, on the contrary, struggle with the issues involving violence and making victims. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the "Rode Jeugd" was active in the Netherlands: a radical leftwing organisation that did not shun violence and took Mao as its example. In the shadow of the German Rote Armee Fraktion, they fought against the Vietnam War and capitalist society. In Holland, they carried out bomb attacks. When a group of people left for Yemen to follow a Palestinian guerrilla training in 1976, the point of no return seemed to be passed. Their instructor over there, RAF member Peter-Jürgen Boock, who later kidnapped German union leader Hanns Martin Schleyer, remembers those Dutch very well. Were they fit to be terrorists? And will they ever shed this stigma? In The Red Years, these people look back and are confronted with archival footage of their actions, attacks and victims.
Data:
11/28/2005, 18:00, City 5 (regular)
12/2/2005, 10:00, City 6 (regular)
to top it off a hilarious film
FRIENDS OF KIM
Hans van Dijk
Raphaël Wilking
North Korea is the country many love to hate. Declared as a nation on the axis of evil by George W. Bush, it is embraced by a worldwide group of supporters known as the Korean Friendship Association. They set out for a march through North Korea. Their aim: to show solidarity with the regime and the North Korean people. The authorities even allowed some United States citizens in, and an American journalist from ABC. The "International March for Korea's Peace and Reunification" is led by a 29-year-old Spanish citizen, Alejandro Cao de Benos de Les y Perez. Originating from an aristocratic family, he heads an organisation with mainly young members who are fed up with the consumerism of the Western world. In 12 days, the 22 participants of the march travel through a country full of monuments, propaganda and poverty. Gradually, some start feeling ill at ease as they discover that the "workers' paradise" is far from heavenly. At the border with South Korea, where American soldiers are on patrol, not everyone shouts along with Alejandro as he breaks into "Yankees go home." Right before the end, the journey comes to a Kafkaesque denouement when the American journalist's hotel room is burglarized.
 http://www.friendsofkim.com
Data:
12/1/2005, 18:15, City 6 (regular)
12/2/2005, 14:15, Calypso (regular)
 E-Mail: david@idfa.nl
 Website: http://www.idfa.nl
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