DocPoint – border breaking and provocation

The DocPoint – Helsinki Documentary Film Festival programme includes many films that deliberately use provocation to expose something that would otherwise remain hidden. The festival programme also features films dealing with immigration and cultural borders, as well as the Winners & Bestsellers series comprising the most successful documentaries of the festival circuit. DocPoint – Helsinki Documentary Film Festival will take place on the 26th –31st of January 2010.

The End Justifies the Means series is all about films where the documentarist doesn’t settle for mere observation and recording, but becomes an active element. This sometimes rough approach aims to go beneath the surface. Renzo Martens’ Episode 3 – Enjoy Poverty turns the reasoning behind charity upside down, Mads Brügger shows the world’s worst improvisation troupe struggling in North Korea in The Red Chapel, the makers of Stolen don’t pull any punches in trying to expose the best kept secret of refugee camps, slavery; in Bassidji, openly liberal Tamadon Mehran is confronted with an Iranian islamistic militia group, while Erik Gandini couples Italian politics and the entertainment industry in Videocracy.

The films of the Arrivals series tackle issues with immigration and life between two cultures. Winner of the Best Documentary award at Germany’s DOK Leipzig The Arrivals shows employees and clients of a reception centre in Paris struggling towards a better future. The massive proportions of internal immigration in China is the issue in the Amsterdam IDFA Grand Prix winner Last Train Home – a movie that shows the greatest movement of population in the world as 130 million Chinese city dwellers travel to the countryside for the New Year.

Borders are the focus of the Defining Borders and Taking Risks seminar as well, where altruistic charity work takes the stand – even if laws work against immigrants, the homeless and  prostitutes, citizens can work for them. What may appear as civil disobedience to some may well be compassion to someone else. The seminar, organized in collaboration with Into Kustannus and Demos Helsinki, is open to all and will take place on the 30th of January at 12 am.

The Winners & Bestsellers series includes the winner of the European Film Academy Documentary – Prix Arte Award, The Sound of Insects: Record of a Mummy, which tells, through his diaries, the story of a man who decided to starve himself to death. The Most Dangerous Man in America presents Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the top secret Vietnam report to the public in 1971, throwing political life into the turmoil of the Watergate scandal leading to the resignation of President Nixon.  Presumed Guilty, on the other hand, is the film that led to the release of José Rodriguez from prison, to which he had been sentenced despite his innocence. Byambasuren Davaa, who’s The Story of the Weeping Camel touched us all, comes back with his new piece, The Two Horses of Genghis Khan, the journey of a musician to her roots in the plains of Mongolia.

The film schedule for DocPoint will be released on the festival’s web pages in the beginning of January, along with the side event programme, which is more detailed than ever – for instance, daily meetings with directors are a novelty this year.

Ticket sales begin on the 18th January, for more information visit www.docpoint.info.

For additional information, interview requests and press material contact:

Sanna Paakkanen
Press Coordinator

DocPoint – Helsinki Documentary Film Festival
Fredrikinkatu 23, 00120 Helsinki, Finland
Tel. +358 46 616 1232
press@docpoint.info
www.docpoint.info